By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. This first ran on July 20, 2022.
It’s not often that apologists for the abortion industry get to testify in extravagant detail how to snuff out your kid—at least not in an official capacity as a witness for a congressional hearing. Enter Renee Bracey Sherman, founder and executive director of We Testify, to testify about chemical abortions, the ultimate in do-it-yourself abortion techniques.
Tuesday’s hearing before the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations had four other panelists. The topic was “the impacts of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn the landmark ruling guaranteeing abortion rights nationwide,” according to the Huffington Post’s Alanna Vagianos. But Sherman stole the show.
Vagianos hailed her testimony for “explain[ing] in plain terms how to take the medication.”
She first told the committee that chemical abortions—“medication abortions”— are comprised of two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol.
“It is one mifepristone pill followed by four misoprostol pills dissolved under the tongue 24 to 48 hours later, or a series of 12 misoprostol pills, four at a time, dissolved under the tongue every three hours,” Bracey Sherman said. “There’s no way to test it in the blood stream and a person doesn’t need to tell police what they took.”
Sherman assured the committee that medication abortions are safe, safe, and safe again. She offered the usual “effectiveness” number–95% “effective”– and the mantra that they are “safer than Tylenol.”
Of course, medication abortions have their own set of complications, including over 24 deaths and thousands of “adverse” events.
The dangers were increased exponentially in December 2021 when the Biden FDA eliminated the requirement that women go in person to the abortionist’s office to receive their chemical abortion drug.
The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG) recently said “the White House and leading medical groups are failing to warn the public about the dangers associated with allowing at-home chemical abortion medication to be delivered by mail without an in-person clinic visit,” according to Valerie Richardson.
Dr. Christina Francis, CEO-elect of the pro-life physicians’ group, warned that this is a recipe for disaster. In-person exams help determine how far along women are in pregnancy before taking the pills, for example.
“Women should also be screened for a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, which occurs in 1 in 50 pregnancies, preferably with an ultrasound,” said Dr. Donna Harrison, CEO of AAPLOG and a board-certified OB-GYN.
“By not having an ultrasound, by allowing home use, you have 1 out of 50 women who are at risk of dying because the symptoms of a rupturing ectopic pregnancy are exactly the same symptoms as a Mifeprex abortion: pain and bleeding,” she said.
“There have been women who have called with pain and bleeding and they were told, ‘Honey, lay down and take a Tylenol,’ and they bled to death because they had a rupturing ectopic pregnancy,” she said.