Australia has loosened restrictions on chemical abortions yet new data proves they are less safe for mothers than the authorities would have us believe.
The abortion pill has become the preferred method of terminating a pregnancy for most Western women, including in Australia. Legally available since 2006, it now accounts for up to 60% of Australia’s 90,000 abortions.1
This increase has been exacerbated by a loosening of restrictions around who can prescribe the pill. Yet a new study from the US should be raising the alarm among those who believe that medication abortion is a safe option for women.
Chemical abortions in Australia
In Australia, the abortion pill is produced by Marie Stopes International under the name MS-2 Step and was formerly known as RU-486. The new name reflects the two-stage protocol for a chemical abortion: first the drug Mifepristone is consumed to stop progesterone production; this effectively stops the unborn baby from accessing nutrition from its mother. Then 36-48 hours later, the drug Misoprostol is taken to expel the dead child.
If the second pill is not consumed and high doses of progesterone are given to the mother after the first pill, then there is a good chance that the action of the abortion pill can be reversed and the baby saved.
Doctors previously required special certification in order to prescribe MS-2 Step, but since August 2023, the Therapeutic Goods Act has allowed any GP to do so. Additionally, nurses, midwives and other medical professionals are now legally able to prescribe the abortion pills, as explained in our previous article.
New South Wales’ new bill
The state which most recently jumped on the abortion access bandwagon is New South Wales. The bill, put forward by Greens MP Amanda Cohn, brought NSW into line with the other states except Tasmania, enabling chemical abortions to be prescribed by endorsed midwives and nurse-practitioners.
Major amendments saw the most controversial sections of the bill scrapped, including a section that would force health professionals who had a conscientious objection to abortion to facilitate the termination of pregnancies and another that would have forced pro-life doctors to refer women for abortions.
There were concerns that parts of the bill could have led to the closure of Christian and Catholic hospitals for refusing to perform abortion procedures. Even though the bill’s authors said it referred to public institutions and contained no mechanism to enforce compliance, the possibility for amendments to be made in the future caused a huge backlash.
One upside to the new law is that the section related to data collection was expanded – something sorely needed in all those Australian states which currently do not collect data, ie all states and territories other than South Australia and Western Australia.
A timely new ctudy
Yet a new study, released by the American Ethics and Public Policy Centre (EPPC) in May of this year, could throw a spanner in the works of this expanded access to the abortion pill. The study, the largest of its kind, analysed the insurance claims related to more than 800,000 mifepristone abortions over a period of six years.
The results were startling, with almost 11% of women reporting a serious adverse event within 45 days of their abortion. The study did not include ‘mild’ or ‘moderate’ adverse events in its conclusions; mental health consequences were included in the category ‘other abortion-specific complaints.’
Serious adverse events included: repeat surgical terminations due to an incomplete abortion; haemorrhage, including some requiring a blood transfusion; sepsis and ectopic pregnancy. A staggering 5% of women required a visit to a hospital emergency department. The findings call into question the existing FDA statistics of adverse events after Mifepristone occurring only ‘0.5%’ of the time.
SOURCE: Ethics and Public Policy Centre
The EPPC is calling for a thorough investigation of the drug by the FDA, which is still using data from its original decade-old studies, and in recent days, the Commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration has committed to conducting a review of Mifepristone. However, without providing any details or an official statement from the FDA, a review remains to be seen.
Those studies relied on a relatively small number of cases, whereas the EPPC study uses data from 28 times as many abortions. Additionally, the EPPC is calling for the FDA to return to its original, more stringent guidelines for dispensing Mifepristone, such as physician-only prescription in a clinical setting with ready access to high-level medical intervention, if required.
Those guidelines may be contrasted with the current ones, in place since 2023, which mean that women can access a mifepristone abortion after only one telehealth consultation with any approved healthcare provider – who doesn’t have to be a physician. Additionally, healthcare providers have no obligation to report an adverse event unless the patient dies. In the US, the drug is also available by mail-order pharmacy for those living in states which have banned abortion.
Ineffectiveness of chemical abortions
Included among the serious adverse reactions to the abortion pill is a high failure rate. The American study found that more than 5% of chemical abortions fail – somewhat higher than the rate currently quoted by the abortion industry of around 3-4%.
The EPPC study found that “According to the insurance data, 5.26 percent of women undergo a second abortion attempt within 45 days of the first, indicating that the first mifepristone abortion attempt failed.” Not only that, it was also reported that 1.58 percent of mothers were given a second dose of misoprostol but not a second dose of mifepristone, suggesting that the baby was killed by the first drug but not completely expelled from the mother’s body.
The extra dose of misoprostol therefore increases the likelihood of adverse reactions specific to that drug, including effects such as shivering, chills, diarrhoea, abdominal pain, hyperthermia, nausea, vomiting, flatulence, constipation, dyspepsia, headache, breakthrough bleeding, menstrual irregularities, syncope (fainting), lethargy, weakness, and vertigo.
By including the number of repeat abortions in their data, the EPPC concluded that a massive “13.51 percent of women—roughly one in seven—experience at least one serious adverse event or repeated abortion attempt within 45 days of first attempting a mifepristone abortion.“
SOURCE: Ethics and Public Policy Centre
Incomplete data
A second recent study, this time from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, looked at over 28,000 emergency room visits that followed a chemical abortion. The ER visits took place within 30 days of the abortion and it was found that during the 5-year study period, 84% of the admissions were wrongly classified as being ‘miscarriages’ rather than ‘adverse abortion events.’ Additionally, around half of the miscoded cases were high-level medical emergencies.
These findings underscore the fact that the true number of adverse reactions to the abortion pill are not known. The vice president and director of data analytics at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, Dr. James Studnicki, commented on the findings:
“When abortion-related emergencies are disguised as miscarriages, it impairs a doctor’s ability to make informed, evidence-based decisions. That isn’t just a documentation error—it’s a public health crisis. The abortion industry’s push for concealment is unethical and dangerous. Women deserve honest guidance and proper medical care, not advice that jeopardizes their health.”
Conclusion
The recent death of the inventor of mifepristone, Étienne-Émile Baulieu, has helped keep the topic of chemical abortions in the news. After Baulieu’s passing, his widow commented, “His research was guided by his commitment to progress through science, his dedication to women’s freedom and his desire to enable everyone to live better and longer lives.”
Obviously missing from this glowing tribute is concern for the millions of babies who have been put to death via Baulieu’s chemical abortions. As we are learning, chemical abortions are also harming far more women than previously thought – all in the name of “freedom.”
by Kathy Clubb
- Due to limited data collection, most Australian abortion statistics are estimates. ↩︎