Research shows increasing severity and frequently of emergency room visits among women who've used them.
"We have heard lots of claims from the abortion industry that abortion is no big deal and that emergency department visits after abortion do not necessarily mean that anything is wrong," says Tessa Cox of the
Charlotte Lozier Institute. "So we looked at all emergency department visits within 30 days of an abortion or live birth and we analyzed how severe and complex they were on a five point scale and our results were really alarming."
According to the study, visits after abortion drugs were twice as likely to be severe or critical compared to visits after life birth or by women who were never pregnant.
The rate of abortion-related emergency room visits following a chemical abortion increased over 500% from 2002-2015, according to analysis of Medicaid claims data.
Over the same period, chemical abortions within the study population increased from 4.4% to 34.1% of total abortions.
"So this really puts the lie to the abortion industry claims that abortion is safe and easy when we see this this severity and complexity of these emergency department visits increasing,” Cox says.
The numbers could be even higher than the study findings. CLI research also found that by 2015, many ER visits had been miscoded as miscarriages.
FDA acknowledges some risk
The Food and Drug Administration has previously acknowledged mifepristone, the primary abortion drug, as having some risk. According to the FDA, from 2000-2022 there were 28 deaths among 5.6 million mifepristone users.
The other co-authors of the study are Dr. James Studnicki and Dr. Ingrid Skop, both of Charlotte Lozier Institute.
"We all know that abortion ends a human life, but from this study we see that it can pose significant risks to the mothers as well," says Cox. "As pro-lifers, we care about both moms and babies, and we know that women deserve to have all the facts and all the information about the risks of abortion because they are not going to get this information from the abortion industry."
