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Rosalie Markezich sits on a bench wearing a blue headband and a white dress with organ and green leaves.
Photo: Alliance Defending Freedom

Her boyfriend got the abortion pill online and made her take it. She's not alone.

Abortion PillAbortion Pill·By Nancy Flanders

Her boyfriend got the abortion pill online and made her take it. She's not alone.

When Rosalie Markezich looked down at the positive pregnancy test in her hands, a smile spread across her face. She hadn't planned on becoming pregnant, but once she confirmed she was, it was hard for her to hide her excitement. But over the next few weeks, that joy turned to utter grief as her boyfriend pretended to be her in order to obtain the abortion pill online. He then coerced her into taking the drugs under extreme pressure.

It's a tragic story that is becoming all too familiar to women across the country.

Key Takeaways:

  • Rosalie Markezich was unexpectedly pregnant, but happy about it. Initially, so was her boyfriend, but about a week after she told him about the baby, he began pressuring her to abort. She told him multiple times that she did not want an abortion.

  • Preborn babies and their mothers are protected from abortion in Louisiana, so Rosalie's then-boyfriend, pretending to be Rosalie, ordered the abortion pill online from a doctor in California and then yelled at Rosalie until she gave in and swallowed it.

  • Rosalie rushed home to attempt to vomit up the pills, but she couldn't. Ultimately, she lost her baby to an abortion she didn't want.

  • She is tragically not alone. Multiple women have come forward to share their stories of forced or coerced abortion because of how easy it has become to obtain the abortion pill. An online form allows abusive men — or anyone who wants a preborn child to die — to order pills without the mother's permission, which can then be secretly administered to or forced upon her.

The Details:

In an interview with Live Action News, Rosalie explained that in October of 2023, she realized she might be pregnant and decided to take a pregnancy test. While her pregnancy was not planned and she believed she was not in a strong financial position, Rosalie couldn't help but smile when she saw the positive result.

However, she was wary about telling her then-boyfriend, and waited a week to do so. At first, he seemed to be happy, telling her that she should move in with him, and that their life would be "legendary." But within a week, his attitude completely changed, and Rosalie found herself facing immense pressure from him to have an abortion.

The Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision had been handed down by the Supreme Court about a year and a half earlier, in June 2022, allowing Louisiana, where Rosalie lives, to protect preborn babies from abortion. That law should have been able to protect her and her baby, but abortionists and abortion-supportive organizations immediately began skirting the laws of pro-life states to mail abortion drugs across borders to anyone who asked for them.

"A week after I told him, his decision was turned upside down," Rosalie told Live Action News. "He said it was in everyone’s best interest if I aborted. He said his sister knew where to get [abortion] pills and he went ahead and ordered them without my permission to my house."

Using Rosalie's email address, her baby's father went online, pretended to be her, and ordered abortion drugs from California doctor Remy Coeytaux. Coeytaux prescribed the abortion pill to Rosalie and mailed them to her home without any verification as to whether it was truly Rosalie ordering the drugs, how far along she was, how old she was, or of any health conditions she may have had.

After the abortion pill arrived at her home, her then-boyfriend soon also arrived — to make sure Rosalie took them. She tried to lie, telling him she had already taken them, but he didn't believe her. She got into his car with him, and he began to drive her around, pressuring her to abort. At this time, Rosalie believes she was five or six weeks pregnant, meaning her baby likely had a heartbeat.

"I kept telling him, 'I want [the baby]. I don't want to abort my baby.' At that moment, he said I would ruin his life if I had this baby, and I told him, 'What about mine?'" she explained.

But he refused to back down.

"Eventually, after all of the shouting, I told him that if I aborted my child, I would never be the same. I did not wish to or want to take the pills. He stopped the car very suddenly and snapped at me," she said. "I've been around abusive men before, so I know the signs and I know when I need to watch my back. I was terrified. I was crying."

She continued, "Eventually I said, 'Fine,' and came up with a plan to take the pills and immediately go throw them up. I felt coerced. He was watching me do it."

Once she took the pills, Rosalie panicked. She asked to be taken home, and when she got there, she ran inside to the bathroom and tried to make herself vomit, but she couldn't get all of the drugs out.

"Then the blood started coming. I realized at that moment that my baby was gone," she said. "I sat on the toilet until my legs were numb. I couldn't get myself to leave the bathroom because that would make it real. Knowing that from now on, I don't have my child."

Thumbnail for My Abortion Pill Story - Natalia - I Saw My Baby

Zoom Out:

As Rosalie tried to move forward with her life under the weight of her heartbreak, she didn't yet know that countless women were suffering the same pain that she was.

Since the Biden administration loosened safety rules surrounding the abortion pill, allowing the drugs to be ordered online and mailed, multiple similar stories have made headlines, with many other women likely remaining silent.

"I learned about several other women who went through the same thing, if not worse, than my case," she explained.

  • In 2022, Jeffery Smith was convicted of attempted first-degree intentional homicide of an unborn child after he accessed the abortion pill and used it to spike the water of his child’s mother, who was 21 weeks pregnant at the time, and had refused to have an abortion.

  • In 2024, Mason Herring accepted a plea deal after admitting he spiked his wife's water with an abortion drug in 2022. It was the couple’s third child, and she was born 10 weeks early with developmental delays as a result of the drug. He was given probation, which he broke, landing him in jail.

  • In 2024, Stuart Worby was sentenced to 17 years in prison for spiking his mistress’s drink with abortion drugs he was able to secure from one of the largest abortion businesses in the UK. When he realized his mistress was not going to abort their baby, he crushed mifepristone — the first drug of the abortion pill regimen — into orange juice, which she drank as they spoke about what his involvement would be in the baby’s life. He then deceptively inserted misoprostol inside her vaginally during sex.

  • In 2024, Robert Kawada was charged with misleading a woman into taking misoprostol. He and the woman were dating when she became pregnant, and when he found out about the pregnancy, he ordered mifepristone and misoprostol online, pretending to be the woman. Then, he had someone pose as a nurse from the hospital to tell her that her iron was low. He then gave her the abortion drugs, telling her they were iron pills. The woman trusted Kawada as his dad was an Obstetrics and Gynecology doctor; she took the pills, and her baby died.

  • In 2025, Justin Banta, who worked at the US Department of Justice, was charged with capital murder and tampering with evidence after slipping abortion pills into his pregnant girlfriend's drink in 2024.

  • In 2025, David Benjamin Coots pleaded guilty to second-degree assault, tampering with a witness, and fourth-degree assault after he inserted an abortion drug into his mistress without her knowledge during sex. She went to the emergency room with heavy bleeding, and the medical staff discovered the pills inside of her. Tragically, her baby did not survive. Coots was sentenced to one year in prison.

  • Also in 2025, Stephen Doohan was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison for inserting an abortion drug into his mistress during sex.

  • It isn't just abusive men who can access the drug and force a pregnant woman or teen to take it. In 2024, a mother in Louisiana ordered the abortion pill from a New York abortionist. The girl, who did not want an abortion, was "made" to take the pills by her mother and the girl ultimately experienced serious complications and was taken to the hospital. The mother and abortionist were indicted on felony charges for a criminal abortion.

Like Rosalie, these women are mourning the deaths of their babies who were targeted for death and killed by people who were supposed to care for them and their mothers — all because the abortion pill is so easy to access.

Rosalie believes that if the FDA under the Biden administration had not removed the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pill, which allowed the drugs to be shipped through the mail, her baby would still be alive.

"Before hearing about the lawsuit, I didn’t even know it was a thing that was happening," said Rosalie. "I’m sure there are a whole bunch of people out there that have zero clue that this is going on." She added, "It felt terrible to know other women are feeling this too and that it's happening so often." She worries about it happening again.

To be a voice for herself, her baby, and the countless other mothers and children affected by forced abortion, Rosalie joined a lawsuit against the FDA to have the safety rules put back in place on the abortion pill.

Alliance Defending Freedom attorney Gabriella McIntyre, who is representing Rosalie, explained:

"When women are harmed in their state — in their prolife states that have very strong prolife protections — it's become impossible to actually enforce the law against folks in other states who have been enabled by the FDA's changes in removing dispensing requirement to send these abortion drugs in the mail basically at will... [They are doing so] not knowing who they are sending it to, not verifying gestational age, [and] not meeting with a woman to make sure that there's no contraindications.

So... the FDA, by removing that in-person dispense requirement in 2023, basically enabled all of this to now happen — enabled states to protect those doctors who are sending these drugs in the mail across state lines illegally, made it impossible for states like Louisiana, who after the Dobbs decision decided to protect life, to actually enforce their prolife laws — and that puts women like Rosalie in these painful and awful situations."

Read more about the lawsuit and the FDA regulations here.

By The Numbers:

Recent polling shows that most American voters agree with Rosalie that the abortion pill should be dispensed in person. A survey conducted over three days in August by McLaughlin & Associates found that 81% agreed with the statement that "No one should be able to get chemical abortion drugs online or from a foreign country and be able to give them to a woman without her knowledge or consent."

In addition, 71% approved of requiring a doctor's visit for a woman to obtain the abortion pill, and 70% approved of a proposal to "require doctors to screen for and report signs of coercion or abuse" before prescribing the abortion pill.

The Bottom Line:

Rosalie's complaint has been filed, and now it's a waiting game to see if the case will be heard or dismissed. The government shutdown may make the wait even longer, and in the meantime, other women and children may become the victims of forced abortion by pill.

Rosalie wants other women who may be facing pressure to abort to know to always look for help because there are people out there willing to help, including those who work and volunteer at pregnancy centers.

Live Action News is pro-life news and commentary from a pro-life perspective.

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