The Abortion Pill: The New Battleground for Life
rtllou| Since the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, abortions in our community and across the country have continued unabated. As abortion clinics shutter, in-home medical abortions have proliferated. The mission of Right to Life of Louisville is to educate our community about the dignity of every human life. How we got here and the truths we need to communicate about a procedure that has converted women’s bathrooms into abortion clinics. A brief timeline: 1980 Mifepristone is developed in France. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone which is necessary for the survival of an unborn child early in pregnancy. 1987 The company which developed mifepristone seeks approval for its use in France. Through clinical trials, this company demonstrated the efficacy of mifepristone, in combination with misoprostol (a synthetic prostaglandin medication used to induce labor, among other things), in terminating the lives of young children early in pregnancy. 1993 In one of his first actions, newly elected President Bill Clinton directs the FDA to investigate the use of mifepristone in the US. 2000 The FDA approves mifepristone for use through seven weeks of pregnancy. 2011 The FDA requires Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for mifepristone and it can only be administered in a hospital or clinic. 2016 The FDA extends the window a pregnant woman can be prescribed mifepristone to 10 weeks of pregnancy. 2020 The COVID pandemic is used as justification for temporarily lifting in-person restrictions for prescription of mifepristone. The medication can be dispensed by mail. Half of all abortions in the US are medical abortions. 2021 The FDA under Joe Biden affirms that it will no longer enforce the in-person requirement for distribution of mifepristone. 2022 Dobbs v. Jacksons Women’s Health Organization is decided by the US Supreme Court, overturning Roe v. Wade 2023 The FDA permanently removes the in-person requirement for mifepristone prescriptions. The Biden DOJ issues an interpretation of the Comstock Act finding that it is legal for USPS to deliver abortion pills in any state. April 2023, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a US District Court Judge in Texas, issues a preliminary injunction suspending the 2000 approval of mifepristone. The Supreme Court eventually finds that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the original party which sued the FDA to challenge its approval of mifepristone, did not have standing to challenge the FDA decision. The Supreme Court never considers the substance of the Alliance’s challenge. 2025 The Ethics and Public Policy Center publishes the first-of-its-kind study based upon 865,727 health insurance claims for women prescribed mifepristone abortions. The study demonstrates that “serious adverse events” from mifepristone abortions are approximately 22 times more frequent than the FDA currently recognizes. This study reveals that 10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, Planned Parenthood’s research arm, cites Kentucky as one of the states having the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. Since Dobbs, KRS 311.7705 has prohibited anyone in Kentucky from inducing or performing an abortion on a pregnant woman whose unborn child has a detectable heartbeat. A baby’s heartbeat can be detected as early as 5 ½ to 6 weeks after the first day of a woman’s last menstrual period. This is shortlyafter the time when a woman can learn she is pregnant through a home pregnancy test. KRS 311.7705 effectively prohibits abortions in Kentucky unless the life of the mother is endangered. In spite of the legal proscription against abortion in Kentucky, women in Kentucky continue to procure abortions in high numbers. The Cabinet for Health and Family Services has reported that 9 abortions were performed in Kentucky in 2024 (the last reporting year), four of these abortions were medical abortions. However, this is not the full story. National reporting indicates that Kentucky residents procuring abortions in 2024 numbered nearly 3000 with 100% of those abortions in October through December being medical abortions, i.e., mifepristone. And this number likely represents only a fraction of Kentucky women procuring medical abortions due to women acquiring abortion pills online without a medical provider and women aborting in states like Illinois where providers are not required to report abortion procedures. All of us have heard about the safety of medical abortions. Planned Parenthood’swebsite states that the abortion pill “is a safe and effective way to end an early pregnancy.” And EMW, Kentucky’s last abortion clinic which closed shortly after the Dobbs decision, mysteriously continues to maintain a website which represents that the abortion pill is “very safe.” However, the 2025 EPPC study exposes that lie. The current FDA drug label reports that only .5% of women experience serious adverse events from use of mifepristone though the actual number is closer to 11%. So, while 100% of children die from a completed medical abortion, 11% of their mothers will experience a serious adverse event. The “safe, legal and rare” mantra of the 1980’s and 1990’s has been replaced with“dangerous, legal and abundant.” Right to Life of Louisville is battling the culture and working to educate our community on the dignity of every human life – no matter his or her stage of development. Over the last several decades, our culture has performed yeoman’s work in numbing women to their maternal instinct to protect their young and dissuading fathers from protecting their children. |
