Pro-Abortion Study Falsely Claims Abortion Pill is Perfectly Safe for Women

A new pro-abortion study has been released claiming abortions using the mifepristone (RAU 486) abortion pill are perfectly safe — even though abortions kill and injure women and kill unborn children.

In Ohio, lawmakers passed a law saying abortion centers in the state can’t put women’s health at risk by not properly using the dangerous RU 486 abortion drug as recommended by the FDA.

The law tells abortion practitioners not to encourage women to use the abortion drug vaginally, which experts say could be responsible for why the RU 486 abortion drug killed four women in California. It also says the abortion pill can’t be used after the seventh week of pregnancy.

The abortion drug, also known as mifepristone, has been responsible for the deaths of dozens of women worldwide and it has injured thousands of women in the United States alone.

But a pro-abortion study claims the laws don’t help women.

According to the PLOS Medicine study, which analyzed medical chart data from four abortion providers before and after the law, forcing Ohio abortion providers to adhere to the outdated FDA guidelines did not improve women’s health.

“There is no evidence that the change in [the Ohio] law led to improved abortion outcomes,” the study concludes. “Indeed, our findings suggest the opposite.”

One leading pro-life advocate noted the hypocrisy of the abortion industry conducting a study claiming limits on abortion are not helpful.

“A new study by abortion industry advocates released today should be met with the same skepticism we would give to tobacco industry findings that their products are ‘safe,’” said Americans United for Life Acting President and Senior Counsel Clarke Forsythe.

He pointed out that The Bixby Center at the University of California, San Francisco, funded by Warren Buffett, along with abortion advocates at Planned Parenthood and elsewhere today released the study.

“When considering a study, you have to consider the source, and in this case, the fact that abortion advocates argue against regulations of a deadly drug that have taken the lives of women as well as children is no surprise,” said Forsythe.  “Chemical abortions can be very dangerous for women, and it’s appropriate to for state officials to protect women’s lives with life-affirming legislation.”

In the brief on the law, AUL explained that the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 2011 report accounting for at least 2,207 severe adverse events (complications) in the U.S. related to the use of RU-486—including hemorrhaging, blood loss require transfusions, serious infections, and death—fails to reflect all adverse events or the severity of the complications. The brief notes,  “This high number of serious adverse events is even more troubling in light of widespread and consequential inadequacies in reporting on drug-induced abortions.”

He said it’s interesting to note that in the Bixby report, several factors are listed as potentially impacting the results – such as missing medical records or a proportion of women who took the drugs but did not come in for follow up appointments. In fact, the researchers themselves note, “There may be alternative explanations for the increased rates of interventions and side effects found in this study after the law change.”

In addition, the sample size was shockingly low, especially considering the very sweeping recommendations made that would impact public health, and the bias in the “study” was obvious in that conversations women had with medical practitioners were deemed to be an undesired outcome.

“Knowing that chemical abortions are dangerous and an increasing segment of the abortion industry’s sales, it’s vital that states continue to look at ways to protect women from predatory practices,” said Forsythe.

The study underscores a need for all states to enact specific reporting requirements for drug-induced abortions and their complications to facilitate more extensive medical research into and study of these deadly drugs.