By Paul Tuns:
Researchers say telemedicine abortion pill dispensing put women at risk
A study published in the January edition of the journal Family Practice noted that during the pandemic, many Canadian abortion providers – most of them family physicians — moved to a telemedicine model of delivering abortion services. Telemedicine is when a doctor consults with a patient over the phone or online without seeing them in-person, and abortions obtained this way utilize the abortion pill combination of mifepristone and misoprostol. The study’s authors say that telemedicine abortions can increase access in rural or remote areas and do so with no increased risk compared to in-person consultations because of claims that the abortion pill is safer than surgical abortion.
However, the research does not back that conclusion. Indeed, the British studies the Family Practice article references have been debunked by researchers such as Michael J. New of the Charlotte Lozier Institute and independent health consultant and researcher Kevin Duffy.
Michael New wrote in National Review last August about the shortcomings of the UK study (and a similar California study). An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology study published last February compared British women who obtained the abortion pill through in-person doctors visits and those who obtained it through telemedicine consultations. New said that a close “look at the United Kingdom raises some very serious concerns about the safety of telehealth abortions” noting that Kevin Duffy had found a 54 per cent increase in follow-up emergency care between 2019 and 2020 for women who had a chemical abortion, and a 19 per cent increase in ambulance responses in such cases. This increase correlated with an increase in the use of the abortion pill in 2020 following pandemic limits on surgeries in British hospitals.
A JAMA Network Open study on California women who obtained a telemedicine abortion found few that required follow-up care, but New argues that its sample size of 141 was relatively small and researchers had no information about the outcomes of nearly 20 per cent of the women being examined.
New points instead to “a significant body of research” that shows chemical abortions are more dangerous to women, with two in particular finding that the abortion pill has a complication rate four times larger than surgical abortions. One study analyzed a data set of all California Medicaid patients and another looked at more than 42,000 Finnish women between 2000-2006.
Using the abortion pill can be fatal with an unknown ectopic pregnancy which is why many jurisdictions, including Canada until 2018, required an ultrasound before prescribing the abortion pill. The ultrasound, which can also determine the preborn child’s age, can also be used to rule out use of the abortion pill after 10 weeks gestation, the point at which the pill’s manufacturer says it is no longer safe to use. The UK data shows that at least 11 women needed hospital emergency services after being prescribed the abortion pill after 10 weeks, including four who obtained them after 24 weeks.
The International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology study claimed that just one in 23,000 women using the abortion pill suffered complications, but Duffy’s research using the Freedom of Information Act to search more records that the self-reported incidences of doctors, found that study vastly under-estimated the total number of complications.
Among the complications in 2020 from abortion pills were included two maternal deaths. Both maternal deaths, in March and April 2020, were from women who obtained their abortion pill in person.
In total, the IJOG study said there were 188 official complications from the abortion pill, including haemorrhage, uterine perforation, sepsis and/or cervical tear but due to how complications are reported after discharge, they are under-reported in related to use of the abortion pill. Official government statistics admit as much. Furthermore, the official statistics do not include failure of the abortion pill to kill the preborn child as a complication. In another report, “Medical Abortion Fails 1-in-17 Women,” Duffy said that “it is well-established that (medical abortion) has an expected treatment failure rate of six per cent,” which means that one-in-17 women who use the abortion pill will “subsequently need hospital treatment for complications from an incomplete abortion.”
In his report, “Listen to all the data, not just some of it” Duffy said of the IJOG study, it underreported “removal of retained products of conceptions” by nearly 75 per cent because it relied on self-reported data from abortion providers and not the complete hospital records that he obtained through Freedom of Information searches. Whereas the official reports show that in 29,984 medical abortions from April to June 2020, there were 208 cases in which women were surgically treated to remove the products of conception (the preborn child), or a rate of 0.7 per cent. But Duffy’s research found that the actual number is about 250 women per month going to hospitals to remove the retained products of conception, a rate closer to three per cent.
Likewise, the IJOG study says that a minuscule seven cases of post-abortion pill haemorrhaging, or 0.02 per cent of all women, but Duffy found that actually number of cases to be about 100 times higher, or 2.3 per cent of women who used the abortion pill.
In the same report, Duffy said that Freedom of Information data shows that on average, 36 women call emergency services for “medical assistance relating to complications arising from the taking of abortion pills” and each month, an average of 20 ambulance responses are necessary in England and Wales in these cases.
A report by Operation Rescue said, “There is good reason to believe similar effects of telemedicine abortions are occurring in the U.S., but are being suppressed in favor of pro-abortion political talking points that declare abortion drugs are safe.”
Campaign Life Coalition national president Jeff Gunnarson said that such data is hard to come by in Canada, but he assumes that, if it were available, it would tell the same story: “The abortion pill is always deadly to the unborn child and often harms and sometimes, in rare cases, kills, the mother.” He said “women deserve to know the truth about the health risks of the abortion pill,” and not “propaganda from the abortion industry and their friends in the medical establishment that have been pushing easy access to the abortion pill even before the pandemic started.”
