Undercover OB/GYN exposes how easily anyone can get abortion pills

Dr. Christina Francis, OB/GYN and CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), recently discovered just how easy it is for anyone to obtain abortion pills online.

Key Takeaways:

• Dr. Francis visited the Plan C website earlier this month, and went through the process of ordering mifepristone and misoprostol online.

• Despite giving the site conflicting information — claiming to be a teenager with multiple pre-existing health conditions and a history of multiple c-sections — she was approved for the abortion pill regimen.

• The Plan C site also allowed her to change her answers when her first answers would have allegedly disqualified her from obtaining the drugs.

The Details:

Doctor Goes Undercover to Buy Abortion Pills. The Reality is Worse Than You Think.

Plan C

Dr. Francis began the investigation by logging onto Plan C, which she described as the "Amazon of abortion pills."

In a video posted to YouTube on March 11, Dr. Francis can be seen going through what would be the typical process to obtain mail-order abortion pills from an online vendor. Women in every state are able to access Plan C to obtain mifepristone and misoprostol by mail, even where abortion is not legal.

In the video, Dr. Francis states:

"I'm going to search as if I'm a woman in Indiana, or even a girl, who is wanting to obtain abortion pills. So you can see here they give me a long list of results of places that will provide abortion pills, including U.S.-based clinics, as well as other online clinics and community networks.

I don't really know what community networks means. I think it means a bunch of women putting pills together who have no medical experience, so that's scary, obviously.

But let's just take a look at this. You can see here on the screen, some are advertising that they will only dispense these pills to girls ages 16 and above — which, remember, 16 is still a minor — but others like Aid Access, which is one of the biggest suppliers of abortion pills in the world, will dispense to all ages and for pregnancies up to 14 weeks.

This is well beyond the approved range by the FDA, which is 10 weeks, and they're openly advertising that they're going to dispense pills up to 14 weeks of pregnancy."

As Francis pointed out, anyone could go online to these sites and order pills, including men.

Aid Access

With that, Francis moved on to Aid Access, which allows women to order abortion pills up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, which is the end of the first trimester/beginning of the second trimester.

Francis states:

"... They don't talk about risks. 'Work 96 to 99% of the time'. 

I'm going to stop here and point this out. 96 to 99% of the time is an estimate at the very early stages of pregnancy.

If a woman is 13, 14 weeks pregnant here and is ordering these pills, she's got a 1 in 3 chance of needing to have a surgical completion of her abortion, potentially even an emergency surgery. 1 in 3. So that's about a 33% chance that these pills are not going to work for her.

And then they go on to say that the pills will arrive in one to five days. But again, who's going to say that the woman is going to take them as soon as she gets them? So there's no guarantee that even if a woman is in the right stage of pregnancy here, that that's actually going to be when she's taking these pills."

She further noted that Aid Access did not screen for medical conditions that would be contraindications for taking the abortion pill regimen, like anemia.

On the website, Francis put in information as if she was 13 years old, did not know when her last period was, had an IUD in place, was on blood pressure and blood thinner medications, had anemia, and had undergone three prior c-sections.

"I'm going to put really inconsistent answers in here and we'll just see if I'm able to get the pills," Francis explained.

Occasionally, Aid Access did say her answers disqualified her from getting the pills, but she was able to just go back and change those responses.

For example, at one point, Francis said she was a man — but again, she easily went back and changed her answer without any issues from the Aid Access site.

But Aid Access also specifically warned her that pregnancy itself is dangerous.

Francis said:

"This is blowing my mind. They did not talk about any of the risks, other than bleeding, of mifepristone, which are significant. And yet they want me to agree to understand that my pregnancy right now is dangerous to my health.

This is manipulation of young and vulnerable girls and women. It is not medical care. It is not informed consent. This is really making me angry." 

1st Trimester Abortion | The Abortion Pill | What Is Abortion?

The site then asked Francis to agree to take the pills as long as she agreed that she lived near a place offering basic medical care.

"If a woman is suffering complications, she needs to be close to a place that has a lot of blood for her potential blood transfusion, that has in-house gynecologic services. So if she needs an emergency surgery, she can get that," Francis said, adding that "if you show up to your local urgent care, hemorrhaging from these drugs, they will be able to do nothing for you."

"This is infuriating," she added. "It is not the kind of care that any woman in this country, or anywhere else for that matter, deserves."

Aid Access allowed Francis put in a fake name, address, and date of birth, without requiring any ID to verify.

"Within, like, two minutes of submitting the form on Aid Access, I got an email, which we will show you," she said:

"And it said that all I had to do was confirm that that was the right address to send this to you and then pay my $150. And then it says this payment includes everything. Email us back with a copy of the payment confirmation or a screenshot of the payment completion webpage. And then after I send that, it says that I will be prescribed the pills....

Doesn't say that... anybody reviewed any of the things.... So you're a 13-year-old who's had three c-sections with an IUD, with a risk of ectopic pregnancy, who also has taking blood thinners, has anemia, and they prescribed you the pills."

Doctor Goes Undercover to Buy Abortion Pills. The Reality is Worse Than You Think.

Zoom In:

While the abortion industry routinely claims that chemical abortions are safe, this is far from the truth. An analysis from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) claimed that "serious adverse events from mifepristone, the first drug in the abortion pill regimen, occur at a rate approximately 22 times higher than the rate reported on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) label for the drug."

It also stated that "nearly 11% of women (10.93%) experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other serious or life-threatening adverse events following a mifepristone abortion," and stated that the failure rate is significantly higher — nearly double — than what is reported by the manufacturers.

And when women do have adverse reactions, these are frequently hidden. As Live Action News previously reported:

Abortion pill prescribers are required to report complications or deaths of which they are aware; however, if they are unaware, then there will be no report. One way to keep complications under wraps is to advise women to bypass the prescriber and present directly to the ER and lie, claiming a natural miscarriage.

Live Action News documented how bad actors in the industry instruct women to go to the ER for complications and suggest that ER staff should falsify medical documents to cover up abortion pill complications. This is a coordinated attempt to bury the truth.

... [T]his strategy has existed for two decades. This points to the possibility that adverse events data may be highly skewed.

The Bottom Line:

In a statement, AAPLOG said the results they obtained were shocking.

"This site allows women to assume the risk on themselves if they have life-threatening complications that can occur if they have an IUD, on blood thinners, or have anemia. A minor can order them," the statement said. "Just as tragic, abusers can order these drugs and cover up their crimes. This should be a wake-up call. It is time for the FDA to reverse its reckless actions and respect individual state laws by immediately reinstating crucial safeguards that will ultimately protect both women and their preborn children."