FDA Move to Approve Abortion Pills by Mail is the Latest in a Downward Spiral
The Food and Drug Administration just gave the green light to abortion pills by mail. They are using the coronavirus pandemic as cover, even as people are getting vaccinated and things are opening up. It’s disingenuous and it is cruel.
Some days at Planned Parenthood on Bleecker and Mott Streets in Manhattan, there is an intimidating man who looks a little like a bouncer outside the abortion clinic, waving girls in so they can’t talk to a pro-life sidewalk counselor who simply wants them to know that there are other options, that there are people who will walk with them. Sometimes there is contact made, but sometimes the pressure to get the abortion, whether from family, friends or our selfish, disposable culture, is too great. This is not women’s empowerment. This is not health care. This is misery, institutionalized and then used as a weapon on young women who need help.
Mail-Order Abortion
Telemed/mail-order abortion only makes sense if abortion, again, is your priority and preference. Are we really on this Earth to end the life of a developing baby to make our lives more convenient? What about love? Do we set girls and boys up for this? From the scenes I’ve witnessed outside abortion clinics I’ve frequented, absolutely not. A few days ago, I watched as a pro-life sidewalk counselor was talking with a girl about how the baby develops and how there is help if she wants to have the baby, and adoption options if she doesn’t want to keep the baby. Her response: “I don’t care. I don’t have time. It’s fine, but it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t care.” If society doesn’t care, how can we expect people to do so?
We should care about women being able to essentially undergo early-term abortions without medical supervision. One of the pills now available via mail, misoprostol, causes contractions. Women taking the pills can experience bleeding and nausea, vomiting, chills, fever and more. Pro-life doctors have raised concerns about the safety of these pills, about emergency-room visits and even deaths tied to them. And according to the Guttmacher Institute (friends of Planned Parenthood), chemical abortions have skyrocketed β from about 71,000 in 2001 to 340,000 in 2017.
COVID-19 is a Boon for Abortion
The number of abortions in America increased in 2018, and when all is said and done, based on a lot of anecdotal evidence, I think we will someday realize COVID-19 was a boon for abortion β especially in states run by Democratic governors who were sure to keep abortions happening at the height of the shutdown, even when people couldn’t get lifesaving procedures. At a time when we were talking about saving lives, access to life-ending procedures and pills were protected.
We all have become too used to abortion. And the FDA’s move to allow abortion by mail only makes it more hidden, more remote from the lives of anyone other than the girl left to her dorm room or wherever else to deal with the reality of ending the developing life inside her. Whatever you think about abortion, that’s what’s happening. Shouldn’t it be a matter of common ground for people of good will to not abandon young women in this way, to leave them alone with this momentous decision? And to let them know there are other options? Why are the abortion industry, the Democratic party and abortion-clinic “escorts” so afraid of information and accompaniment when it comes to abortion? Women deserve better. And we will never be a kinder, more humane people without some serious examination of this bloody cruelty.
Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review magazine and author of the new book A Year With the Mystics: Visionary Wisdom for Daily Living. She is also chair of Cardinal Dolan’s pro-life commission in New York. She can be contacted at klopez@nationalreview.com.