The Callousness of Abortion Pills

Y ou can order abortion pills in the United States and receive them in your mailbox. This should be enough to give us all pause, whatever our moral positions on abortion.

You can be in Texas, where abortion is technically illegal, and get your lethal cocktail from a doctor in New York. Louisiana? No problem. California will provide. There should be a way to stop this — pro-lifers keep talking about the Comstock Act, from 1873, for example — but there doesn’t seem to be a will among government officials, some of whom appear to be pro-life in name only.

What about popular opinion? My guess is what polling has suggested for decades: People don’t want women in crisis pregnancies to be left alone and without options. This is a good thing. Women deserve better than abortion. Their children deserve better, too, though they don’t have a voice in the matter — they deserve an actual chance at life. And more relationships are poisoned by the gravity of abortion than we could ever know. Do we really want to just let that be, unquestioningly?

What if an unexpected pregnancy were considered a blessing instead? Is there ever really a right time? Pregnancy and child-rearing naturally come with scores of things that can be considered untimely inconveniences. Don’t kid yourself ­— “planned parenthood” is a mirage in more ways than one.

And then there are the ugly realities about abortion in America these days. Sure, there might no longer be the need for invasive surgical abortion. Instead, there are pills. Available via mail or the local pharmacy. Democratic senator Patty Murray recently asked Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin about some pro-lifers’ concern that chemical abortion might affect our water supply. It’s not unreasonable to suspect that there might be something unhealthy about flushing the remains of aborted pregnancies — unborn children — like any other natural waste product. It’s disturbing that we would pretend this is a normal way to live in a supposedly advanced — and civilized — society.

“If mail-order abortion wasn’t a thing, I’m 100 percent sure I would have my child,” Rosalie Markezich testifies. Her boyfriend initially was willing to have the baby they had conceived. But he changed his mind. She insisted that she would not have an abortion. So he used her information and ordered abortion pills from a physician in California. While they were driving one day, they got into an argument. He pulled over in a hospital parking lot and forced her to take the pills. At his house, she bolted for the bathroom, trying to vomit. It was too late. “I just lay there bleeding, crying.” She and the State of Louisiana, with the help of Alliance Defending Freedom, filed a lawsuit against the FDA’s 2021 rule that allows the prescription of abortion drugs via telehealth. She’s fighting back to try to spare other young women the abuse and loss she suffered. Such stories will become only more frequent and prominent; chemical abortion is now the most common method of abortion.

“I think it is absolutely crazy that you can order a pill directly to your door that kills your child,” Abby Johnson — who once ran a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic but is now a pro-life activist — recently wrote on social media. “Abortion pills are evil, and this shouldn’t exist in a civilized country.”

To use the e-word requires a moral compass. But to acknowledge that there is a human death involved in abortion simply requires science. Whatever happened to “safe, legal, and rare”? Abortion in America is anything but the latter, and it’s not safe, either. As for its legality: Too many politicians would rather ignore the issue of abortion if it can’t be politically beneficial. Some may pretend this state of affairs is empowering, but it’s the opposite: It’s deadly not only to the unborn but also to our souls. Do we love life enough to reject the convenience of death?

This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.