If abortion empowers women, why deceptively market abortion pills as ‘period pills’?

A new survey published in the journal Contraception is raising eyebrows by asking women if they would take so-called “period pills” (in reality, drugs used in the abortion pill regimen) when their menstruation is late — without knowing if they’re pregnant first.

The survey admitted that the pills would most likely end an existing pregnancy, and claimed an “advantage” of the “period pills” is that they would “stop pregnancy earlier than abortion.”

In short, abortion pill profiteers wanted to know if marketing these drugs under a different idea (and insinuating that abortion isn’t really abortion if you don’t know for certain that you’ve killed your child) would make women more likely to take them.

Key Takeaways:

• A new survey published in the journal Contraception asked women if they would consider taking “period pills” if their period is late.

• These “period pills” are the exact drugs used in the abortion pill regimen: mifepristone and misoprostol, which carry significant safety risks.

• The only difference between “abortion pills” and “period pills” is that the woman has not taken a pregnancy test and does not know if she is pregnant.

• This rebranding of the abortion pill is disingenuous, insulting to women, and dangerous. It’s a marketing ploy to reach a wider customer base with the abortion pill.

• One study found that nearly 11% of women (10.93%) experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other serious or life-threatening adverse events following the use of this drug regimen for abortion.

• 58% of women surveyed said they would not “probably” not or “definitely” not take “period pills.”

The Details:

Data from a nationally representative panel survey carried out from December 2021 to January 2022 among women ages 15 to 49 sought women’s interest in period pills, “a method used to induce bleeding when a menstrual period is late and pregnancy is suspected but not confirmed.”

The survey was carried out by a University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) research team led by Ushma D. Upadhyay Leah Koenig, Jennifer Ko, and M. Antonia Biggs (who all worked on the CHAT study, meant to expand mail-order abortion pills with funding from pro-abortion groups and foundations) along with others. The survey included questions about the women’s history of abortion and birth, sexual orientation, experience of barriers to reproductive health care, and abortion attitudes.

The survey also asked several questions about period pills and deceptively described taking the pills as ‘bringing back a period”:

Instead of taking a pregnancy test, people could take these pills to bring on bleeding like a period. The pills would be safe and could cause period-like symptoms, such as bleeding, cramping, and nausea. If you were pregnant, the pills would almost always end the pregnancy.

However, women who have taken these pills have said the effects are nothing like a period. The pain is described as similar to labor contractions, and women can hemorrhage.

The survey also states, “Period pills (also sometimes called late period pills or missed period pills) could be offered as an additional service distinct from abortion, contributing to a full spectrum of options that people could use to control their fertility… They are safe to take in the absence of pregnancy and will likely end a pregnancy if one exists… Period pills can consist of misoprostol, either alone or with mifepristone…”

But “period pills” are not exactly “distinct” from abortion.

‘Period pills’ = Abortion pills

The survey notes, “A key distinction between period pills and medication abortion is the absence of a pregnancy test before taking the medications.”

In fact, it is the only distinction.

In other words, if you don’t know you’re pregnant, did you really kill your baby?

Monica Snyder, executive director of Secular Pro-Life, responded to this deception in an Instagram video:

Do you know what else has misoprostol and mifepristone? Abortion pills. That’s literally what abortion pills are.

But wait, that sounds like the pills are the same and the difference is just the circumstances when you take them? Yeah!

They’re abortion pills. Period pills are abortion pills. They’re marketing them to women as an alternative to abortion for people who want to avoid having an abortion.

Instead of having abortion pills, they can have ‘period pills,’ which are abortion pills.

Survey result: Most women would not take ‘period pills’

The survey included 6,964 women (of an original 16,113 who were invited to participate). While the study reported that 24% said they would “definitely or probably consider” using period pills, when broken down, just 10% said they would “definitely” use them, and 13.5% said they would “probably” use them.

In contrast, 42.8% said they would “definitely” not consider using period pills, and 15% said they would “probably” not use them. More than half of the women surveyed — 57.8% — said they would not use ‘period pills.’ 

Although the “period pills” were described as almost always ending an existing pregnancy, 50.3% of the women surveyed marked the option of “stop pregnancy earlier than abortion” as an advantage of “period pills,” highlighting the confusion over what mifepristone and misoprostol actually do.

A ‘legal gray area’

The research makes mention of a second study that reviewed interest in “period pills” in the U.S. by surveying patients at family planning facilities who were seeking pregnancy testing. That study found that 42% of patients would be interested in a “missed period pill” when it was defined to them as “pills that could be taken if you had missed your period and did not want to know if you were actually pregnant.”

• Here’s the key: The women said that “period pills” would provide them with “less moral conflict” and “less guilt” because they would not have to know if they were pregnant and because they wanted “alternatives to abortion.”

Because there is no confirmation of pregnancy, there is no confirmation of an abortion taking place even if the woman took the abortion drugs. As the Reproductive Health Access Project explained, “Medically, period pills are neither contraception nor abortion. Therefore, they occupy a legal gray area, with minimal precedent or case law.”

The website PeriodPills.org is already marketing the abortion drug to women as “period pills.” It cites a study on period pill benefits, quoting women as saying that taking the abortion pill without a pregnancy test would be psychologically beneficial.

One woman said, “I wouldn’t feel I am a bad person.”

Another said, “It would be easier on my emotional well-being to not know I was actually pregnant but to alleviate the issue which is my missed period.”

Why It Matters:

Gynuity Health Projects, a research organization conducting clinical trials aimed at expanding access to the abortion pill, considers itself to be “at the forefront of efforts to develop and advance ‘period pills’ in the United States and other settings around the world.” But Gynuity is funded by organizations with ties to the American eugenics movement, exposing the dark truth that “period pills” could be a way to sell abortion to women who don’t want to have abortions.

Marketing abortion pills as “period pills” is disingenuous and insulting. Abortion proponents have always argued that women are “empowered” by making abortion decisions and that women don’t regret abortion. But the rebranding of abortion pills as “period pills” says the opposite in an attempt to get women who otherwise may have chosen life to “choose” abortion instead. Why are so-called “pro-choicers” so desperate for women to have abortions?

Let’s also not forget that the abortion pill is dangerous, but the truth of its risks has been hidden thanks to years of manipulation and lies. Since it was approved for use in the U.S. in 2000, abortionists have told women who experience complications from the abortion pill to go to an ER and lie to the doctors there. Instead of telling ER doctors that they had taken the abortion pill, women have been telling doctors that they are experiencing a miscarriage.

This has skewed the safety data on the abortion pill, making it appear safer than it is while also making pregnancy itself appear more dangerous and miscarriages more common and more dangerous.

As previously reported by Live Action News, as a result of this scheme, abortion complications have not been adequately reported to the FDA. Live Action research fellow Carole Novielli explained:

The FDA’s 2023 mifepristone label acknowledged that 2.9 to 4.6% of women who take the drug require emergency care, and six percent (6%) who took the abortion pill in a telehealth study required emergency care. The manufacturer’s medication guide notes that up to seven percent (7%) of women will “need a surgical procedure” to complete the abortion. A more recent study, “The Abortion Pill Harms Women,” published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), found that nearly 11% of women (10.93%) experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other serious or life-threatening adverse events following a mifepristone abortion.

The Bottom Line:

Big Abortion has been working to push mail-order abortion pills, over-the-counter abortion pills, and advanced provision abortion pills for years. The desire to kill off children in the womb is more important to those who profit from abortion than women’s health and safety, or even women’s right to know the truth about the pills they are taking.

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