Are Abortion Pills Safe for Women?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday concerns abortion. On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case known as Roe v. Wade that a woman had a legal right to get an abortion. On June 24, 2022 – 49.5 years later – the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to an abortion.

Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases that centered on abortion-inducing pills such as mifepristone and misoprostol. The court’s decision will be made known sometime between now and the end of June. Meanwhile, we learn more truth about abortion.

As the Supreme Court was hearing the most recent arguments about abortion, The Daily Signal interviewed Elizabeth Gillette outside the Supreme Court Building. Gillette is a woman who considers herself as a “victim of a chemical abortion” for her 2010 experience. During the interview, Gillette said that she “was not prepared for how severe and devastating” the abortion-inducing drugs she took would be and admitted that she regrets having the abortion. Gillette described her abortion experience to Mary Margaret Olohan as follows: 

“I found myself on the bathroom floor, covered in a pool of blood, wondering if I was going to survive the procedure, completely alone,” Gillette said.

“I reached down and lifted out of my body the perfectly formed transparent sac with a recognizable baby inside,” she told Olohan….

“It was so incredibly traumatic, “Gillette said of her own experience with abortion-inducing drugs. “I suffered horrific side effects, not only physical … to this day, [but I also] still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“It’s something that has followed me since that day,” she added….

She was between six and seven weeks pregnant when she took unspecified chemical abortion pills, Gillette recalled.

“They said it was going to be like a double period, and that just wasn’t true,” she said. “No one told me that I would hold my child in my hands and would need to decide what to do with that body. I ultimately flushed him down the toilet, into the septic tank.”

Fourteen years later, Gillette said, she relives that moment of being “terrified, wondering if I’m going to survive, hoping and wishing that I would be able to get out of that situation.”

“Nobody was there to help me. I was completely alone,” she told Olohan.

Use of the abortion drugs she obtained was subject to restrictions at the time, she said, but she doesn’t think she received the care to which she was legally entitled.

“So imagine now, with no restriction in place, what is a woman going to experience without any of that care?” Gillette asked.

“This isn’t something that’s safe, like Tylenol,” she said. “This is something that will follow women for the rest of their lives.”

“I am here today at the U.S. Supreme Court because I want the FDA to do its job,” she said. “I want them to keep women safe.”

Gillette was not the only woman testifying against abortion drugs. Catherine Herring told The Daily Signal that her husband put an abortion-inducing drug in her drink, and she “got violently ill.” She ended up in an emergency room “with a urine sample that was black in color.” She also claimed to have suffered “severe abdominal pain, diarrhea, and bleeding” and still suffers from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). She said, “Medical personnel need to be involved. For the states that continue to offer abortion pills, there need to be safety standards.”

These are the experiences and thoughts of only two women. However, their experiences show that abortion pills are not similar to double periods or safe. If nothing else is done, women should be told to enlist the help of a family member or friend while going through an abortion.

Three of my daughters miscarried (natural abortions) babies that were planned and wanted. Their experiences tell me that losing a baby affects a woman physically, emotionally, and spiritually. To go through the experience alone would just make the experience more difficult to endure.