Five Ways to Halt the Advance of Chemical Abortion
By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., National Right to Life Educational Trust Fund
Editor’s note. Last week, Dr. O’Bannon gave us “5 Reasons behind the Abortion Industry Push for Chemical Abortions.” But we wanted you to know that that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. This week, in a two-part series, he shares five things you and I can do to help stop the advance of this medical mockery.
Riding
the crest of a wave of carefully manufactured abortion industry hype
and avoiding the scrutiny of any substantive honest media investigation,
the “new and improved” abortion by pill method has cornered a
significant portion of the American abortion market and paved the way
for the spread of chemical abortions around the world. Its expansion is
strong and far-reaching, but not inevitable. Here are a few ways to
halt the advance of chemical abortion in the U.S. and in countries far
and wide.
Strategy 1: Tell the Truth about the Baby
The first and fundamental argument advanced by abortion’s advocates is to try to deny the humanity of the unborn child, to claim that he or she is nothing but an undifferentiated “blob of tissue,” something that can be clipped off or cut out and tossed in the trash like a fingernail or an inflamed appendix.
As mentioned in one of the stories written last week (see http://nrlc.cc/11kodQp), efforts to revive this thoroughly discredited argument were a specific part of the strategy behind the development and promotion of RU-486, the abortion pill, which is, in fact, a two-drug technique. It was clear from the decline in the number of surgical abortions and abortion rates that something was causing many women to turn away from abortion. Thus the lure of a new product, a new chemical abortion method, like RU-486, for the Abortion Industry.
Efforts to push chemical abortions were not only a way to promote a new method that could enable women to avoid surgery (another concern of women), but also to abort earlier in pregnancy when babies were smaller and less developed. The hope was that this would help those who were uncomfortable with abortion be more willing to accept it.
To counter this, pro-lifers will need to emphasize that from the moment of conception, the unborn child is not some “blob of tissue,” but a marvel of purposeful complexity.
Right away, from the moment sperm joins egg and there is a new genetic code unique to that new individual. The child’s DNA initiates the rapid growth, differentiation, and specialization that quickly go on to form the layers that will give rise to the brain, nervous system, skin, digestive system, muscles, bones, and circulatory system. All are intricate in their design, all bearing the signature genetic imprint and developmental nuances that belongs to that special person alone. (Even among genetic twins, there are differences.)
The child’s heart is already beating when the child is just three weeks old, before many women even realize they are pregnant or consider a chemical abortion. Features such as the head, spinal cord and arm buds become visible during the time frame where these abortions are supposed to be performed.
Ignoring the government protocol, many in the abortion industry are adding at least two weeks to the recommended cut-off date for RU-486 abortions. It is during this additional two weeks that fingers are appearing and brain waves are showing up on EEGs and babies begin moving around.
Women who’ve had these abortions encounter children much more developed than they may have expected. They speak of seeing “tiny fists” and “dark spots like eyes” and “a little skeleton not quite formed.”
To combat the revived “blob of tissue” propaganda, pro-lifers need to share the facts above and continue to make the argument that neither one’s size nor age nor stage of development determines one’s value or humanity, that our individual identities and our biological lives encompass the whole span of our existence from conception to natural death.
Strategy 2: Tell the Truth about RU-486 and the other Abortifacients
The abortion industry carefully cultivated an image of abortion pill, RU-486, as some nearly magic pill that practically makes the baby disappear. They present the chemical method as a safe, simple, easy method that avoids all the risks and indignities of surgical abortion.
The truth is far different.
Chemical abortions with RU-486 are complicated, tedious, painful, and risky.
First-trimester surgical abortions are completed in a matter of minutes. But abortions using drugs such RU-486 (mifepristone) and the second drug (a prostaglandin) take days, maybe a week or more. They employ at least two drugs, are supposed to involve three trips to the doctor’s office over a two week period, and typically come with a great deal of pain, bleeding, and a host of other unpleasant side effects. There is a significant chance they will not work. Nineteen women taking it have ended up dead and over 600 have ended up in the hospital.
RU-486 works by blocking the effect of progesterone, the pregnancy hormone that signals the woman’s body that she is pregnant and makes sure her reproductive system is set to welcome and nurture the young child. With that signal stymied, the baby’s life support system shuts down. The baby starves to death, and the woman’s body, failing to recognize the child’s presence, initiates the shedding of the rich nutrient lining of the uterus the way it does during the normal menstrual process when there is no baby present.
By itself, though, RU486 is not always powerful enough to expel the tiny corpse. A second drug, a prostaglandin such as misoprostol, is given to stimulate powerful uterine contractions to expel the child and complete the abortion. It is intensely painful and often very bloody.
Few women realize that a woman loses more blood from a chemical abortion than a surgical one. And the pain and cramping can go on for hours, and the bleeding can go on for weeks. Side effects like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are often part of the package.
This is obviously not the magic abortion pill women have read about in the women’s magazines.
The abortion industry has tried tinkering with the protocol to reduce the costs and the number of office visits. But the process, if it works, will still be painful, bloody, and drawn out. They have tried extending the deadline past the seven weeks LMP (after a woman’s last menstrual period), but this reduced “effectiveness” in trials of the drug—that is, leading to more incomplete abortions.
So-called “Web-cam abortions,” where the pills are dispensed remotely via videoconference with an abortionist who is not present, leaves the woman to find help on her own if she begins to hemorrhage or has some other complication.
As a consequence of these changes, the drugs may prove not just less effective, but more dangerous.
A number of women hemorrhage, some die. More than half a dozen women died after contracting rare bacterial infections. At least two patients died from ruptured ectopic pregnancies that were apparently not detected in the original examination and screening. (For more details on some of the deaths, see the NRL Factsheet “Deaths Associated with RU-486″ herewww.nrlc.org/Factsheets/FS15_pilldanger.pdf)
The normal chemical abortion process is ordinarily so arduous, so painful, so bloody that both patients and doctors can easily fail to recognize the signs of something more serious, such as a deadly infection or a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
RU-486 is no wonder drug and these abortions are not the walk in the park their promoters have made them out to be.
And, despite the new packaging, these are still abortions, and they still take the life of a unique, precious unborn child.
So tell women the truth about these chemical abortions. The more people know what these abortions are really like, the less they’ll like them.
More tomorrow.
Source: NRLC News
Editor’s note. Last week, Dr. O’Bannon gave us “5 Reasons behind the Abortion Industry Push for Chemical Abortions.” But we wanted you to know that that doesn’t have to be the end of the story. This week, in a two-part series, he shares five things you and I can do to help stop the advance of this medical mockery.
Riding
the crest of a wave of carefully manufactured abortion industry hype
and avoiding the scrutiny of any substantive honest media investigation,
the “new and improved” abortion by pill method has cornered a
significant portion of the American abortion market and paved the way
for the spread of chemical abortions around the world. Its expansion is
strong and far-reaching, but not inevitable. Here are a few ways to
halt the advance of chemical abortion in the U.S. and in countries far
and wide.Strategy 1: Tell the Truth about the Baby
The first and fundamental argument advanced by abortion’s advocates is to try to deny the humanity of the unborn child, to claim that he or she is nothing but an undifferentiated “blob of tissue,” something that can be clipped off or cut out and tossed in the trash like a fingernail or an inflamed appendix.
As mentioned in one of the stories written last week (see http://nrlc.cc/11kodQp), efforts to revive this thoroughly discredited argument were a specific part of the strategy behind the development and promotion of RU-486, the abortion pill, which is, in fact, a two-drug technique. It was clear from the decline in the number of surgical abortions and abortion rates that something was causing many women to turn away from abortion. Thus the lure of a new product, a new chemical abortion method, like RU-486, for the Abortion Industry.
Efforts to push chemical abortions were not only a way to promote a new method that could enable women to avoid surgery (another concern of women), but also to abort earlier in pregnancy when babies were smaller and less developed. The hope was that this would help those who were uncomfortable with abortion be more willing to accept it.
To counter this, pro-lifers will need to emphasize that from the moment of conception, the unborn child is not some “blob of tissue,” but a marvel of purposeful complexity.
Right away, from the moment sperm joins egg and there is a new genetic code unique to that new individual. The child’s DNA initiates the rapid growth, differentiation, and specialization that quickly go on to form the layers that will give rise to the brain, nervous system, skin, digestive system, muscles, bones, and circulatory system. All are intricate in their design, all bearing the signature genetic imprint and developmental nuances that belongs to that special person alone. (Even among genetic twins, there are differences.)
The child’s heart is already beating when the child is just three weeks old, before many women even realize they are pregnant or consider a chemical abortion. Features such as the head, spinal cord and arm buds become visible during the time frame where these abortions are supposed to be performed.
Ignoring the government protocol, many in the abortion industry are adding at least two weeks to the recommended cut-off date for RU-486 abortions. It is during this additional two weeks that fingers are appearing and brain waves are showing up on EEGs and babies begin moving around.
Women who’ve had these abortions encounter children much more developed than they may have expected. They speak of seeing “tiny fists” and “dark spots like eyes” and “a little skeleton not quite formed.”
To combat the revived “blob of tissue” propaganda, pro-lifers need to share the facts above and continue to make the argument that neither one’s size nor age nor stage of development determines one’s value or humanity, that our individual identities and our biological lives encompass the whole span of our existence from conception to natural death.
Strategy 2: Tell the Truth about RU-486 and the other Abortifacients
The abortion industry carefully cultivated an image of abortion pill, RU-486, as some nearly magic pill that practically makes the baby disappear. They present the chemical method as a safe, simple, easy method that avoids all the risks and indignities of surgical abortion.
The truth is far different.
Chemical abortions with RU-486 are complicated, tedious, painful, and risky.
First-trimester surgical abortions are completed in a matter of minutes. But abortions using drugs such RU-486 (mifepristone) and the second drug (a prostaglandin) take days, maybe a week or more. They employ at least two drugs, are supposed to involve three trips to the doctor’s office over a two week period, and typically come with a great deal of pain, bleeding, and a host of other unpleasant side effects. There is a significant chance they will not work. Nineteen women taking it have ended up dead and over 600 have ended up in the hospital.
RU-486 works by blocking the effect of progesterone, the pregnancy hormone that signals the woman’s body that she is pregnant and makes sure her reproductive system is set to welcome and nurture the young child. With that signal stymied, the baby’s life support system shuts down. The baby starves to death, and the woman’s body, failing to recognize the child’s presence, initiates the shedding of the rich nutrient lining of the uterus the way it does during the normal menstrual process when there is no baby present.
By itself, though, RU486 is not always powerful enough to expel the tiny corpse. A second drug, a prostaglandin such as misoprostol, is given to stimulate powerful uterine contractions to expel the child and complete the abortion. It is intensely painful and often very bloody.
Few women realize that a woman loses more blood from a chemical abortion than a surgical one. And the pain and cramping can go on for hours, and the bleeding can go on for weeks. Side effects like nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea are often part of the package.
This is obviously not the magic abortion pill women have read about in the women’s magazines.
The abortion industry has tried tinkering with the protocol to reduce the costs and the number of office visits. But the process, if it works, will still be painful, bloody, and drawn out. They have tried extending the deadline past the seven weeks LMP (after a woman’s last menstrual period), but this reduced “effectiveness” in trials of the drug—that is, leading to more incomplete abortions.
So-called “Web-cam abortions,” where the pills are dispensed remotely via videoconference with an abortionist who is not present, leaves the woman to find help on her own if she begins to hemorrhage or has some other complication.
As a consequence of these changes, the drugs may prove not just less effective, but more dangerous.
A number of women hemorrhage, some die. More than half a dozen women died after contracting rare bacterial infections. At least two patients died from ruptured ectopic pregnancies that were apparently not detected in the original examination and screening. (For more details on some of the deaths, see the NRL Factsheet “Deaths Associated with RU-486″ herewww.nrlc.org/Factsheets/FS15_pilldanger.pdf)
The normal chemical abortion process is ordinarily so arduous, so painful, so bloody that both patients and doctors can easily fail to recognize the signs of something more serious, such as a deadly infection or a ruptured ectopic pregnancy.
RU-486 is no wonder drug and these abortions are not the walk in the park their promoters have made them out to be.
And, despite the new packaging, these are still abortions, and they still take the life of a unique, precious unborn child.
So tell women the truth about these chemical abortions. The more people know what these abortions are really like, the less they’ll like them.
More tomorrow.
Source: NRLC News
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