Sex ed leader trains teens as ‘abortion doulas’ who lead women to lie about abortion pill injuries

A well-known leader U.S. in sex education, which receives millions in taxpayer dollars, is training teens as “abortion doulas” who encourage women to lie about abortion pill complications — and even recommends using breast pumps to attempt at-home abortions.

Key Takeaways:

• Advocates for Youth (AFY), which partners with Planned Parenthood to provide sex ed curricula nationwide, has received more than $32 million in taxpayer-funded grants since 1995.

• Like Planned Parenthood, AFY spends millions in lobbying and grassroots activism to indoctrinate teens, even actively training them to become abortion traffickers. AFY’s hyper-sexualized propaganda consistently includes pro-transgender and pro-abortion ideology.

• AFY’s Youth Abortion Support Collective Training Series teaches 14-24-year-olds to become “abortion doulas” and instructs them on how to teach women to lie about abortion pill complications.

• The series endorses use of the abortion pill late in pregnancy.

• The series trainers admit women have been traumatized by seeing their formed babies after taking the abortion pill.

• The AFY trainers say that herbs and a breast pump can be used to attempt at-home abortions — something that is not considered safe for women.

According to AFY, its “Youth Abortion Support Collective” (YouthASC) Training Series was created to train 14-24 year olds who are interested in “becoming an abortion doula, companion, and/or support person” and aims to create “youth-led abortion support efforts, specifically for high school and college students.”

For the YouthASC and Abortion Out Loud initiatives, AFY teams up with the international group, DOPO – Abortion Care and Education for All, to provide course content online which can be used by activists who want to host and lead groups from anywhere.  

The training video hosts, Zachi Brewster and Carly Manes, claim to provide scientific and medically accurate information in the AFY activist training. But do they? 

The Details:

Lies and Deadly Consequences: The Abortion Pill

As Live Action News has reported, the abortion industry has made efforts for decades to hide the truth about abortion pill complications. This drug regimen has killed an estimated 7.5 million preborn children in the U.S. alone since it was legalized in 2000.

In line with these efforts, AFY and DOPO train youth activists to instruct women about how to take abortion pills and lie to medical professionals when a woman is facing potentially deadly complications. The training states (emphasis added): 

Mifepristone and Misoprostol are NOT detectable in the blood if taken orally… so if someone is having a medical abortion and they do need medical support or they are having an abortion at home but they do need to go to a care facility, they can say that they are having spontaneous miscarriage as the process is the same.

As Live Action News previously reported, when women lie about abortion pill complications:

• Those complications are never reported as such to the manufacturer or the FDA.

• Other women (and the public) remain in the dark about the true risks of the abortion pill.

While this is certainly beneficial for the abortion industry — which will keep claiming the pill is “safer than Tylenol” — it is not safe for the women who are put at risk due to this intentional deception. Studies have shown that the risk of more serious side effects is far higher than the risk printed on the FDA’s mifepristone label.

Providing a detailed chart, the AFY trainers openly discuss the use of abortion pills up to 28 weeks of pregnancy, which they recognize is far beyond clinical recommendations. However, Manes and Brewster portray the use of abortion pills beyond the FDA-approved limit as not only common, but recommended in places where abortion is restricted.

Both Manes and Brewster — who report having helped women to use the abortion pill up to 24 weeks of pregnancy — never discuss the increased health risks to women; instead, they advise activists to memorize a chart that breaks down the use of the abortion pill through 28 weeks. 

When asked by an attendee about the commonality of live births resulting from failed abortions using abortion pills, Manes responds by stating that babies aborted at 12 weeks cannot survive outside of the womb because “it’s [the baby] not developed enough.” However, due to the abortion pill’s “no-test” protocol, women can get the abortion pill far later, Brewster notes, and they might… (emphasis added):

… end up passing pregnancies that are further along and bigger than they expected, and some people find that very distressing because the fetus does come out, and it’s not that it lives, but it is living even momentarily… and that can be… for some people, very difficult.

The AFY trainers casually admit to the trauma women experience, as well as the abortion industry’s intentional misleading of women.

Brewster states, “A lot of the people I support… are often very shocked sometimes” at the abortion process. She added: 

Providers don’t generally like to talk about bleeding or cramping and pain because they don’t want to fuel anti-abortion rhetoric that abortions can be painful and it is part of the experience for it to be painful….

Some people don’t know, some people think or are told that they will just bleed… passing the clots and the pregnancy tissue [the baby’s remains].

Toxic Advice: Herbs and Breast Pumps  

At one point during the training, Manes discusses herbal and “home-aspiration” methods for self-managed, at-home abortions (emphases added):

Herbal abortion, a home aspiration abortion with a breast pump, is also self-managed… herbs and manual extraction are wonderful forms of managing your own abortion at home.

The promotion of using herbs as an abortifacient is highly dangerous.

The Associated Press reported, “Experts strongly warn against trying to self-manage an abortion using any herbs, as many of these alleged remedies not only do not work but are dangerous or even deadly.”

This AFY video is evidence that the abortion industry is giving women dangerous advice, because “the abortion industry has been intentionally attempting to expand self-managed abortion for years,” as reported previously by Live Action News. 

Live Action News has also reported about the dangerous risks of at-home aspiration abortions, which include: 

• Hemorrhaging 

• Tearing of the cervix 

• Uterine trauma

• Incomplete abortion 

• Infection

Dr. Ingrid Skop, FACOG, VP and Director of Medical Affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute, responded to such outrageous “advice” by AFY/Dopo activist trainers, telling Live Action News (emphasis added):

The recent recommendations by abortion activists demonstrate just how little they care for women. Increasingly dangerous methods are callously promoted as “safe” despite no evidence. One vivid example is the use of a breast pump to “self-manage” an at-home abortion.

Even when an electrical surgical aspiration is performed by an abortionist, it can fail to remove all the pregnancy tissue and baby body parts, requiring a repeat procedure to prevent hemorrhage, infection or other complications.

A personal-use breast pump generates only a fraction of the suction pressure that a surgical aspirator can. This unproven method could injure a woman. Unfortunately, ideology for these practitioners has trumped concern for the health and safety of the women and children.

While this is by no means the first time abortion activists have promoted “at-home” suction abortions, it is shocking to see a former Planned Parenthood employee (and currently listed partner of AFY) make such dangerous claims to teens and women, putting at greater risk the women they claim to serve. 

Abortion Rituals and Destruction of Evidence

During the AFY/DOPO Session 2 training video, Manes and Brewster note that women can arrange for their “pregnancy tissue” (the baby) to be kept for any ceremonies the women wish to do.

Brewster tells her audience, “You can keep it [the aborted baby] in a clean jar or a Tupperware; you can keep it in the fridge or the freezer for a few days before burying it [the baby], or however you would like to ceremoniously, um, yeah…” (emphasis added).

Live Action News has previously discussed ancient pagan rituals interwoven with modern day abortions — some may be quasi-Jewish, Judeo-pagan, or even Satanic rituals. 

Writer Bettina DiFiore pointed out at Live Action News that some earlier cultures had abortion rituals: 

We’re still sacrificing our children in ritual fashion, at times using altars. We’re even doing so for more or less the same reasons. Like the Carthaginians, we’re motivated by population control and the preservation of economic resources. Like the Maya, we kill our children because we consider ourselves–and our personal goals–more important than they are. And like the Aztecs and Chimú, some people even think abortion is necessary to combat climate issues.

The only things that have changed are the specific killing methods and the gods being worshiped. Today, the gods in whose names these sacrifices are committed are usually money, achievement, and “success.” The victim’s own mother even deifies herself by claiming authority over life and death in the name of achieving her own ends.

Live Action Research Fellow Carole Novielli reported that some abortion pill distributors and “abortion doulas” in central America send “a small amount of acid so the client can dissolve some of the fetus, and bury whatever is left” of the remains. The Charlotte Lozier Institute also reported on the ways abortion clinics break laws regarding the proper disposal of human fetal remains; some have used garbage disposals to grind up the bodies of aborted babies.

The “training” by AFY and DOPO goes on to attack pro-life pregnancy centers, which assist women in crisis, as “fake clinics.” Brewster also claims that ‘abortion pill reversal’ (the administration of progesterone in an attempt to outcompete the action of mifepristone) does not work. “Once you’ve taken a mifepristone that pregnancy will need to come out,” she said. The Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) credits ‘abortion pill reversal’ for over 6,000 preborn babies saved.   

Indoctrinate and recapitulate

Manes (who also goes by Carly Kol) is a product of the information disseminated by AFY. She describes herself as a “full-spectrum doula” and is a co-founder and trainer for DOPO. Manes and some other “abortion doulas” claim to “integrate spirituality and ritual” into abortion procedures, “offering yoga, meditation, prayer, traditional medicine and even Tarot reading,” according to Religion News Service.  

In an interview with Rewire News Group, Manes explained how she began her abortion activism after getting involved in AFY’s “1 in 3 campaign” (now known as “Abortion Out Loud”) and joined “Students for Choice” while in college. It was AFY who trained Manes — and she later became an AFY board member and worked as a spokesperson and coordinator for Planned Parenthood Federation of America, according to her Linked In profile.

Manes is also the author of the pro-abortion children’s book, “What’s an Abortion, Anyway?” which Live Action News has reported is far from ‘medically accurate,’ referring to the child growing in the womb as “the pregnancy” and describing the abortion pill as a “medicine” that women can take to “stop the pregnancy from growing bigger.”

Why It Matters:

Because of the accessibility of abortion drugs with no in-person visit, online, with zero testing or assessing gestational age, some women are using it to kill preborn children in the womb very late in pregnancy, which can result in deadly consequences for baby and mother. Promoting early, DIY abortions by breast pump is also irresponsible. Women already suffer incomplete abortions by pill — surely attempting self-abortions by breast pump runs a similar risk of remaining incomplete.

One thing is certain: abortion groups like AFY and DOPO are willing to spread unsafe and false information to women about abortion in order to promote an agenda. As a self-proclaimed leader in sex education for school children across the U.S., AFY must be held accountable and should no longer receive taxpayer funding.

Author’s Note: Special thanks to Live Action Research Fellow Carole Novielli for her assistance with this article.

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