Recently, the Globe & Mail published a story about a woman who died of an infection following an abortion. The story shares how nineteen-year-old Rheanna Laderoute discovered that she was pregnant and went to a women’s health clinic in Brampton. There, she was prescribed the abortion pill Mifegymiso.
Now, the article doesn’t provide much detail about what the abortion pill actually does. So here’s an excerpt from our position paper on the abortion pill:
The abortion pill works through two separate pills. The first pill, Mifepristone, blocks progesterone, which causes the lining of the uterus to break down. The second pill, Misoprostol, induces contractions to cause the “evacuation of intrauterine content.” To be clear, “intrauterine content” is a pre-born child. Pregnancy is defined as “the state of carrying a developing embryo or fetus within the female body.” To terminate a pregnancy requires terminating that embryo or fetus. That is what the abortion pill accomplishes by artificially forcing a woman’s body to prematurely expel the pre-born child who has not yet had time to develop into a state capable of living independently.
What [does] the mother experience[?]
“Nothing – not the drug literature, not the clinic doctor, not even my own gyno – had prepared me for the searing, gripping, squeezing pain that ripped through my belly 30 minutes later…For 90 minutes, I was disoriented, nauseated, and, between crushing waves of contractions that I imagine were close to what labor feels like, racing from the bed to the bathroom with diarrhea. Then, just as quickly, it was over. The next night, I started bleeding. I bled for 14 days.”
This is how Norrine, a pro-choice woman, describes her experience in a 2007 Marie Claire article. An abortion using the abortion pill is a painful, bloody experience. While women’s experiences vary, Norrine’s is considered normal. The product monograph for the abortion pill from Health Canada explains that, “[o]n average, bleeding lasted for 11.4 days and was heavier than a normal period for 2.2 days.” Other very common effects described in the monograph include nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, gastric discomfort, abdominal pain, fatigue, fever, and dizziness.
These “very common” adverse events can be expected by almost everyone who takes the abortion pill. There are also other common adverse events, defined by the monograph as happening for 1-10 out of every 100 women who take the pills – still a significant number. These common effects include prolonged bleeding, severe hemorrhage, and heavy bleeding requiring surgical termination of pregnancy.
Rheanna experienced heavy bleeding and severe abdominal pain for two weeks. Over the following ten days, she visited the local ER three times. She rated her abdominal pain “as 10 out of 10” and held “her abdomen, breathing heavily and crying” as she was assessed.
On her second ER visit, Rheanna was diagnosed with peritonitis, a “swelling of the lining around the abdominal organs.” This peritonitis was due to sepsis, a condition where the immune system goes into overdrive in response to a widespread infection and attacks the body’s tissues and organs. This sepsis was likely an infection caused by the abortion as bacteria entered the uterus through the cervix, which the abortion pill opened to expel the pre-born child and the uterine lining.
Sepsis is life-threatening. In fact, Statistics Canada estimates that “30-50% of people to develop sepsis die from it” and that sepsis is one of the 15 top reasons for death in Canada.
Rheanna was one of those casualties. The emergency room doctors took far too long to realize that she had sepsis. By the time they realized the true extent of the condition, it was too late to effectively treat her.
Abortion kills
Pro-abortion advocates frequently decry how the lack of legal abortion has killed women. They would warn against the ramifications of women taking abortion into their own hands through “coat-hanger abortions.” Such DIY abortions involved sticking a coat-hanger – or some other long, sharp object – up the cervix and into the uterus to stab the pre-born child to death. Upon the death of the pre-born child, a woman’s body generally expels the corpse in the same process as a miscarriage. But, unsurprisingly, such coat-hanger abortions are not safe. They could introduce bacteria into the uterus, causing an infection like Rheanna’s. Or they could accidentally puncture or perforate the bowel, which would spill bacteria into the body cavity. Or they could strike a major artery, leading to severe bleeding or hemorrhaging. All of these adverse effects could be deadly.
Abortion was illegal for over half of Canadian history, and there is no way to know the number of coat-hanger abortions or how many women died from them. One pro-abortion source (which has an interest in highlighting the great number of illegal abortions and the number of subsequent deaths) claims that there were tens of thousands of illegal abortions and hundreds of deaths each year before the legalization of abortion in 1967. One of their arguments was that legalized abortion – performed with sterilized tools by a professional doctor – would be safer.
And it is generally safer for women. But of course, each abortion leads to the death of a pre-born child as well. And legalized abortion triggered a tremendous growth in the number of abortions – deaths of a pre-born child – per year.
But, as we see in the story of Rheanna, the medicalization of abortion leads to health risks for the mother as well. In almost 11% of cases, the abortion pill triggers serious adverse events for the woman in addition to the death of the child. While medicalized abortions may be safer for women than DIY abortions, they certainly aren’t completely safe. The only way to avoid the health risks of an abortion is not to have one at all.
Former American president Bill Clinton famously stated that he believed that “abortion should be safe, legal, and rare.” That was one argument for compromise behind the legalization of abortion on both sides of the border, although the pro-life position has always been that every single abortion is wrong.
Today, abortion is certainly legal. Canada is the only country in the world to have no legal restrictions on abortion. But it certainly isn’t rare. Over 100,000 abortions in Canada are committed annually. And for thousands of women like Rheanna and every pre-born child, it certainly isn’t safe.