The Abortion Pill

What is a Chemical Abortion?

In this type of non-surgical abortion, the first pill called mifepristone is given at the abortion clinic and is used up until 9 weeks of pregnancy. Mifepristone counteracts the natural pregnancy hormone progesterone. Without progesterone the placenta fails, cutting off oxygen and nutrition to the baby, resulting in his/her death. The patient leaves the clinic after the first pill and is instructed to take the second pill, misoprostol, 24-48 hours later. Misoprostol causes contractions which will then expel the dead baby within several hours or a few days.

In the United States, abortion is the leading cause of death with the possible exception of embryos destroyed in association with IVF.

One million lives were lost to abortion last year. To put that in perspective: there were more than the 700,000 deaths from heart disease, 600,000 from cancer, and 200,000 from accidents. Nationally, over 63% of abortions are chemical abortions using the drug “mifepristone.” In Iowa, of the 2, 771 total abortions, 70% are drug-induced abortions. (2023 Vital Statistics of Iowa).

Abortion drugs are widely available on-line without seeing a medical provider and are mailed directly through the U.S. Post Office. This is a gold mine for traffickers and abusers who want to purchase this drug. There are no age requirements, no medical appointments, no follow-up care and no way of knowing if what is received is the correct drug or dosage. These chemical abortions are uniquely traumatic for women because the online abortion industry providers do not prepare them for the very real fact that they will see and must personally dispose of the remains of her dead child, often times in the toilet.

Chemical abortion pills are advertised as a very safe abortion method. Several groundbreaking studies have shown that this is FALSE.

Are Chemical Abortions Safe?

When a San Francisco abortion clinic administered the pill to 18-year-old Holly Patterson, she suffered the ultimate abortion complication. Holly died a week later from a massive infection because fragments of the fetus left inside her uterus caused her to go into septic shock.

In 2025, a groundbreaking study by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, “The Abortion Pill Harms Women: Insurance Data Reveals One in Ten Patients Experiences a Serious Adverse Event,” has confirmed what the pro-life movement has been sharing for years – abortion pills not only kill an unborn child but are extremely harmful for women. This new study reveals that the real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times higher than the FDA reported (and listed on the drug label), and failed to kill the child at a rate more than double than what was reported by the FDA.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE NEW ABORTION STUDY:

One in ten patients experience a serious adverse event after taking the abortion pill.
This study showed that the real-world rate of serious events is at least 22 times higher than what the FDA reported.
This is the largest-known, most recent study of the abortion pill, based on 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017-2023.
10.93% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or other serious life-threatening adverse events within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. This is 1 in 10 women.
In 5% of the cases, the abortion pill does not work as intended and a surgical intervention will be needed to complete the abortion.

Chemical Abortions and the Law

Mifepristone was developed by a French pharmaceutical company and brought to the US at the insistence of President Clinton. The abortion pill mifepristone was approved by the FDA in 2000 based on 10 clinical trials. They used these trials to fast track the approval process despite many concerns and dangerous complications. Some of these trials were outdated and not even conducted in the U.S. and included a fraction of ‘prescreened’ healthy women. The FDA knew of the issues and placed a black box warning on these pills.

COMSTOCK ACT

Since 1873, The Comstock Act prohibited the mailing of chemical abortion drugs. Section 1461: the postal service states that abortifacient matter is not a mailable matter. Section 1462 of the federal code states you cannot use a third party (FedEx, UPS, Internet) to mail abortifacient matter. Longstanding federal law prohibits the mailing of any “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.”

Although the federal code chapters 1461 and 1462 date back to the 1800’s, they are still relevant today. Congress has amended these laws ten times and has kept them in place because they wanted to protect mothers and babies. In amending, they could have eliminated these laws but have not. So, it is illegal to mail these drugs; it is just not being enforced.

Sending mifepristone through the mail increases the likelihood of complications from ectopic pregnancy and Rh incompatibility.

SHIELD LAWS

Shield laws unfortunately allow healthcare providers to send abortion pills to patients in states with bans on abortion without fear of prosecution. These laws are in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.

LEGAL ACTION

A group of health care organizations, in FDA v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, argued that mifepristone had a high rate of complications and the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was arbitrary and forced medical professionals to provide care they might otherwise be unwilling to provide. In March of 2024, the US Supreme Court ruled that the physicians did not have legal standing to bring this case.

CAN YOU GET THESE DANGEROUS MAIL ORDER ABORTION PILLS IN IOWA?

While more brick-and-mortar clinics are closing and fewer and fewer doctors are willing to perform abortions, the abortion industry has come up with new and innovative ways to kill children and harm women along with making a tremendous profit with little overhead expenses.

The abortion industry and on-line websites have been providing mail order abortion pills.

In 2021, the FDA permanently lifted a major restriction on access to abortion pills. It will allow patients to receive the medication by mail instead of requiring them to obtain the pills in person from specially certified health providers.

OTHER STATES WITH ABORTION PILL RESTRICTIONS:

Abortion Pills Listed as a Controlled Substance: Louisiana
Informed Consent: Montana
APR Informed Consent: Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah
In-Person Doctor Visit Requirement: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin
What should be done at the federal level?

The Ethics and Public Policy Center has encouraged the FDA to replicate the EPPC’s study showing the dangers of the abortion pill so they can determine for themselves the validity of this study. The FDA needs to further investigate the harm this drug causes women and consider removing it from the market altogether. The EPPC has also asked the Health & Human Services Department to conduct a thorough review of this drug and the study.

At a bare minimum, the administration should reinstate the stronger patient safety protocols in place in 2000.

What should be done at the federal level?

At a bare minimum, the administration should reinstate the stronger patient safety protocols in place in 2000.

What should be done by the Iowa Legislature?

Pass the “Black Market Abortion Prevention Act”. This act would:

Require an in-person exam and prescription for abortion drugs as well as a follow-up visit
List abortion drugs as schedule IV controlled substances
Increase informed consent requirements including the possibility of abortion pill reversal*
Require the reporting of adverse events caused by abortion drugs

This may give the state attorney general an opportunity to prosecute out-of-state abortionists who are prescribing drugs and shipping them to Iowa women. Texas AG Ken Paxton has filed a lawsuit accusing a New York doctor of prescribing abortion drugs to a Texas resident in violation of state law.

Chemical Abortion History

Comstock Act

Sending mifepristone through the mail increases the likelihood of complications from ectopic pregnancy and Rh incompatibility.

Shield Laws:

Previous Regulation:

The Clinton, Obama, and Biden administrations have expanded the possible usage of abortion pills and lessened and removed the safety provisions, increasing the risk for women.

2000 (Clinton Administration) Safeguards for Mifepristone:

3 required in-person visits
Drug could only be used at 7 weeks (or below) gestation
Drug was prescribed only by a physician
Drug could only be dispensed in office
Drugs had to be taken only in office
Required in-office follow-up
Required reported of adverse events

2016 (Obama Administration)

1 required in-person visit
Drug could be used at 10 weeks gestation
Drugs did not have to be prescribed by a physician
Drug could only be dispensed in office
Drug did not have to be taken in office
No follow-up required
No requirement of reporting of adverse events

2023 (Biden Administration):

0 required in-person visit
Drug could be used at 10 weeks gestation
Drugs did not have to be prescribed by a physician
Drug did not have to be dispensed in office
Drug did not have to be taken in office
No follow-up required
No requirement of reporting of adverse events

The Evil History of RU-486

by Dubuque County Right to Life, April, 2023

Below are excerpts from the article titled "Nazis and Eugenics Brought Us Chemical Abortion: Here's Proof." by Rachel Schroder.*

"In the early to mid-20th century., the pharmaceutical holding company I.G. Farben Chemical Company controlled much of the German chemical industry. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, the infamous Auschwitz was one of I.G. Farben's very own chemical plants, responsible for the slavery and deaths of more than a million people in World War II.

Several of Farben's directors were also found guilty in the U.S.'s Nuernberg War Crimes Trials for slavery and mass murder. Georg von Schnitzler, a member of the managing board of directors of Farben, was even a captain in a violent division of the Nazi party that helped facilitate Hitler's rise before WWII. I.G. Farben Chemical Company was the archetype of an industrial demon.

After the war, Western Countries attempted to utterly splinter I.G. Farben's industrial power, but divided the holding company into three of its own industrial members, Hoechst, Bayer, and BASF.

In 1974, the first of these entities, Hoechst, gained a majority share of the holding company Chimio that controlled a French pharmaceutical company called Roussel Uclaf. By 1982, Roussel Uclaf and developed the RU-486 chemical abortion drug mifepristone.

Abortion Drug's Ties to Population Council, Planned Parenthood.

During the mid-1990's, Roussel Uclaf allied with the nonprofit Population Council, which led the charge for FDA approval of the abortion pill in the U.S., officially granted in 2000. During that time Hoechst acquired the remaining shares of Roussel Uclaf.

Like Hoechst, the Population Council had deeply eugenic roots. Aided by the director of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the organization was founded by John D. Rockefeller III, son of John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

Rockefeller Jr. sponsored German Eugenic research leading up to the late 1930's that influenced later Nazi policy. Through the Rockefeller Foundation, he funded multiple institutions at which Ernst Rüdin, who spearheaded Hitler's gruesome medical research during the Holocaust, held leading roles. One such organization was the Institute for Brain Research, according to The History of News Network.

Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German Race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during he next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüden. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.

Following in the footsteps of the organization that his father founded in the 1950s, Rockefeller II's Population Council supported the American Eugenics Society, eugenics-motivated sterilization of women, and the use of sex-selective abortion. It also tested, along with International Planned Parenthood Federation, population controlling IUD contraceptives in Pakistan, Taiwan, South Korea and India in the '60s despite knowing their dangerous side effects on women. The council itself was led for years by openly eugenicist presidents Frederick Osborn and Frank Notestein, both of whom were members of the American Eugenics Society.

Aborting Minorities

Rockefeller III acted as chairman of President Nixon's 1969 Population and the American Future Commission just two years after receiving Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger Award. The commission staff was headed by Dr. Charles F. Westoff of the American Eugenics Society and advised by eugenicist Daniel Callahan. The final report endorsed decreasing population growth through supporting the option for women to obtain contraception and/or abortion. No wonder the Population Council was such a willing candidate to spearhead FDA approval for the Hoechst/Roussel Uclaf chemical drug."

**Jones, Rachel K., at al. "Medication Abortion Now Accounts for More Than Half of All U.S. Abortions." Guttmacher Institute, 30 Nov. 2022
Schroder, Rachel. "Nazis and Euchenics Brought US Chemical Abortion: Here's Proof." The Federalist 26 Aug. 2022