Hey, Teen Vogue, these 15 women say taking the abortion pill is nothing like having a period

Teen Vogue, a magazine which takes a clearly pro-abortion stance and markets itself to young women, recently published another abortion-favorable article, meant to support the ACLU’s push for more widely available abortion pills, entitled “How the Abortion Pill Works.” Currently, only facilities that offer or refer for surgical abortions and which are registered with the pill’s manufacturer can dispense it. The drug, mifepristone, causes the uterine lining to break down, killing the preborn child. A second drug, misoprostol, is usually given afterwards to cause contractions to expel the dead baby. This is also known as a medical or chemical abortion.

According to the article, the abortion pill is…

Leaving aside the question of how a medication that fails to work or causes complications 2 to 7 times out of 100 (according to the ACLUs numbers) can be called “very effective,” Teen Vogue’s description of the pill is extremely misleading. Women who have taken the abortion pill report experiencing something very different than a typical period.

1st Trimester Medical Abortion: Abortion Pills

Below are the experiences of 15 women who took the abortion pill; their experiences show that the “typical period” claim is a lie.

1. One woman called it the “worst experience… I’ve ever been through,” adding, “The pill for me was the experience of having a baby. Contractions for 10 hours, sweating, screaming, being by myself. It was emotionally scarring and physically horrible.”

2. Another woman said, “[I] wouldn’t wish that my worst enemy should go through a medical abortion. The pain plus the uncertainty as to whether the abortion had really taken place was awful.” (1)

3. Another woman, who also had a surgical abortion, said, “I would not want my worst enemy to go through what I had to go through. There was an extreme amount of bleeding… I was wiped out for three or four weeks….” (2)

4. A 2016 article from Dianne Fersey, “What It’s Really like to Have an Abortion,” relays the author’s experience:

Fersey is no pro-lifer. “Although it was painful, I know I made the right choice,” she says.

5. Norine Dworkin-McDaniel told her abortion pill story in Marie Claire. She was happy about the availability of the abortion pill, believing it was a great thing for women:

When she had an unwanted pregnancy, she read the drug insert and decided to try the pill herself, thinking she’d have no problems:

Instead…

The pill had other, terrible side effects:

She was shocked to learn from her gynecologist that her experience was not unusual. She was told, “One day, you’ll feel just like your old self,” but “[i]t took 9 months.”

6. Abby Johnson was the manager of a Planned Parenthood facility when she chose to abort by pill. She had heard the lines about it being safe and effective. Her next 24 hours were nightmarish:

She lay on the bathroom floor all night, calling Planned Parenthood in the morning. A nurse called her back, saying it was “not abnormal.” Abby endured eight more weeks of cramps, nausea, and blood clots.

7. A woman quoted by abortion pill inventor Etienne–Emile Baulieu said, “The pain was like menstrual cramps, 20 times over….”  (3)

8. Another woman shared her experience on LiveJournal, saying “… [W]hen the second pill was taking effect, I had the most indescribable excruciating pain for more than 6 hours. It almost killed me…. There was just so much pain that I couldn’t even cry.”

9. Kimi Faxon Hemingway had agonizing cramps, fever, chills and convulsions after medical abortion, and bled heavily for a week. Then, “When Hemingway… finally went back to the abortion facility… [t]he physician’s assistant who examined her laughed, “You sure are a bleeder, aren’t you?” Hemingway left the abortion facility in tears.” After three months, she was still bleeding and “wearing diapers.” She visited a different doctor, who had seen women in similar conditions after medical abortion, and prescribed her antibiotics for uterine and bladder infections. After she collapsed in public and was hospitalized, a doctor, “stunned’ at her condition, diagnosed her with a serious infection. Her baby was still inside her, which necessitated a D&C.

10. Another woman said, “… [M]y husband… remembers calling nursing staff on at least two occasions during the 24 hours after my taking the tablets, as we were worried at the nausea, pain and amount/size of blood clots.” This was normal, he was told, for up to three days. “The worst part,” she says, was the time it took. “[W]ith each and every large clot of blood – which I literally could feel passing through my insides and then out of my vagina – [I was reminded] of the fact I was terminating a baby, for which I felt hugely saddened. More than I realized I would.”

11. Another woman said: “… [Y]ou have so long to reflect on it, and I became quite upset. ….[P]sychologically it hits you much harder. You preside over the killing of a baby, completely unblinkingly.”

Baby Development Week by Week

12. A woman may even see her dead (and possibly quite developed) baby. One woman regretted her abortion after seeing her child:

Emotionally traumatized, she could not bring herself to dispose of her child’s body:

Eventually, she threw the baby out with the trash.

13. Amber wrote about her abortion by pill on the pro-life site StandUpGirl.com, quoted on ClinicQuotes:

14. Another woman, who had two prior surgical abortions, told Newsweek, “There was a little bit of regret about seeing [the baby], because it had little hands. I remember little fists. I felt more responsible this time.” (4)

15. One woman in the same situation photographed her baby. She describes the “counseling” she received at the facility:

But she saw her baby’s body. She could count five fingers on each hand.

An abortion by pill is nothing like a woman’s normal period. Teen Vogue is deceiving its readers. Sadly, many young women who read it may only learn the truth too late. Lying to women to promote a pro-abortion agenda is anything but feminist.

Notes

1. Vivian Wahlberg Memories After Abortion(Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing, 2007) 32

2. Miriam Claire The Abortion Dilemma: Personal Views on a Public Issue(New York: Insight Books, 1995) 146

3. Etienne–Emile Baulieu The Abortion Pill (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990) 91

4. Debra Rosenberg and Michele Ingrassia “Blood and Tears” Newsweek Sept 18, 1995. Vol 126, Issue 12