The pain was “worst thing I’ve ever felt,” says woman after abortion pill

Danielle Fersey had a medical abortion and wrote about it in the 2016 article, “What it’s really like to have an abortion” on Babe. “Medical abortion” is the term for an abortion by pill instead of surgery. These abortions are performed in two steps.

The woman first takes the medication Mifepristone, known as the abortion pill. It causes the uterine lining to break down, starving the preborn child of oxygen and nutrients and causing his or her death. Then a second drug, Misoprostol, is given either as a pill or vaginal suppository. Misoprostol causes uterine contractions which cause the woman to expel her dead child and placenta.

In Fersey’s case, she was first given Mifepristone at the clinic, and then went back to have tablets of Misoprostol inserted. She describes what happened next:

After leaving the clinic, I actually felt physically fine, but was advised to get a taxi home instead of walking.

But the pain that came afterwards was the worst thing I’ve ever felt in my life. I couldn’t even move, it was like taking on the period pains of 100 women combined. There was so much blood that I’d have to change my sanitary towel every hour. Overnight, my sheets were covered in blood beyond repair.

Despite her painful experience, Fersely says, “Although it was painful, I know I made the right choice.”

Because Fersey does not regret her abortion (at least not yet) and remains pro-choice, her account can’t be dismissed as an exaggeration to advance the pro-life cause. She appears to have no anti-abortion agenda or ulterior motive to fabricate or exaggerate her story.

Fersey’s testimony of physical agony following medical abortion is just one of many. In a previous Live Action article, I shared 10 quotes from women who had abortions by pill and suffered tremendously with pain and bleeding. For example:

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.

And:

It was the most painful experience ever in my life. On top of emotional pain, when the second pill was taking effect, I had the most indescribable excruciating pain for more than 6 hours. It almost killed me…

Former Planned Parenthood director Abby Johnson wrote a detailed account of the agony she experienced during her abortion by pill. Here is an excerpt:

Ten minutes later, I started to feel pain in my abdomen unlike anything I had ever experienced.  Then the blood came.  It was gushing out of me.  I couldn’t wear a pad…nothing was able to absorb the amount of blood I was losing.  The only thing I could do was sit on the toilet.  I sat there for hours…bleeding, throwing up into the bathroom trashcan, crying and sweating….

I stood up slowly and straightened out my body.  As soon as I was completely upright, I felt a pain worse than any other I had experienced.  I began to sweat again and felt faint.  I grabbed on to the side of the shower wall to steady myself.  Then I felt a release…and a splash in the water that was draining beneath me.  A blood clot the size of a lemon had fallen into my bath water.  Was that my baby? …Then came the excruciating pain again…. Another lemon sized blood clot. Then another. And another. I thought I was dying.  This couldn’t be normal.  Planned Parenthood didn’t ever tell me this could happen…. It was around midnight and I had been in the bathroom for a good 12 hours.

Johnson was told at Planned Parenthood that her experience was typical of what women normally go through during a medical abortion.

Of course, even if these abortions were quick and painless, they would still be moral travesties because they kill helpless preborn children. But women who undergo these abortions suffer greatly as well. The fact that Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers promote this painful abortion method and sell it to unsuspecting women does not show that they are concerned for women’s health or safety.