Yes, West Virginia, You Can Protect Women from Chemical Abortion

A n underreported health care crisis affecting countless American women is being shoved under the rug at a moment when we need swift solutions. Fortunately for the future of women’s safety, a federal court is standing with West Virginia’s right to address this growing crisis.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that states are free to protect their citizens by regulating chemical abortion drugs more strictly than the federal government does. The federal government grants access to the dangerous drugs with virtually no guardrails. This means that it is currently legal for abortion providers to dispense the drugs by mail. This decision is a huge victory for West Virginia and other states where women are too often exposed to the horrific and even deadly side effects of poorly regulated abortion drugs.

Women in rural areas who live long distances from their local hospitals and emergency rooms already have great difficulty accessing prompt, lifesaving care. But these women can attest to the fact that the FDA’s guidance allowing them to order abortion pills (mifepristone) online puts them at even greater medical risk.

For a woman to receive the abortion drug mifepristone by mail requires neither an ultrasound, a physical exam, nor confirmation of gestational age. Instead, women are told falsely that the drug is “safer than Tylenol” and that taking it will merely cause symptoms similar to a heavy period. The truth is that mifepristone often causes severe pain and heavy bleeding and puts women at risk of hemorrhage, infection, sepsis, and even death on their bathroom floors. And all of this far away from essential physician care.

When mifepristone was first approved, the FDA still required in-person visits. Another prerequisite was dating a woman’s pregnancy via ultrasound, since the risks of these drugs increase with each passing week. Only over the past decade has the FDA — with sweeping support from pro-abortion medical groups and lobbying organizations — recklessly stripped each of its safeguards surrounding the pill. This is despite the fact that mifepristone still carries a black-box warning, which is the FDA’s strongest warning about a drug’s potentially serious or life-threatening side effects.

Women are being denied true informed consent now that the FDA has made these drugs available nationally via mail order. The informed consent process typically permits patients to ask questions, make educated choices about their care, or refuse treatment. Without the chance for an in-person examination and consultation with a provider, women take their health into their own hands at great personal risk. In fact, some face coercion and abuse from partners who force them to undergo chemical abortions against their wills.

Far too many tragic stories of botched chemical abortions exist. The most devastating end in patient death. Georgia mothers Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, for example, both took abortion pills without appropriate medical supervision, and they both needlessly lost their lives to the drugs. Stories like theirs — which, contrary to aggressive and misleading pro-abortion messaging, had nothing to do with their state’s pro-life protections — must never happen again.

Women who take mifepristone are not instructed to seek follow-up care. Yet mifepristone’s own label warns that one in 25 women who take the drug will end up in the emergency room at some point following ingestion.

Studies released this year suggest the dangers of abortion drugs are actually much higher. Analysis of insurance claims data reveals that one in ten women will experience serious complications from mifepristone within 45 days of taking the drug. This finding is even higher than the FDA’s reported rate of serious adverse reactions, which sits at .5 percent. Tragically, chemical — not surgical — abortions make up the vast majority of abortions in the nation today, which means that most women who follow through with abortions are silently experiencing terrifying symptoms.

What women and their unborn children deserve is greater oversight in an abortion landscape with virtually no safeguards. The good news is that the Fourth Circuit ruling upholding West Virginia’s pro-life law provides some protections for women and children where the FDA has failed.

This landmark ruling sets a crucial precedent for other areas of the country and should be a guiding star in the movement to prevent abortion drugs from doing unspeakable harm to vulnerable patients.