Taking the abortion pill

Recently, Tiffany Owens wrote a WORLDmag.com Web Extra titled "Holly's Story," which was about the efforts of Monty Patterson to get warning labels put on packages of RU-486, the "abortion pill." Eight years ago, Monty's daughter Holly died seven days after taking the drug.

Abby Johnson, the former Planned Parenthood worker, author of unPlanned, and now pro-life activist, recently wrote on her blog about what she experienced after taking the abortion pill. It is harrowing to read.

In 2003 Johnson was a volunteer with Planned Parenthood and had no objections to abortion. In fact, she'd had one surgical abortion already. She was eight-weeks pregnant and in the process of divorcing her husband. This time she decided to try the abortion pill.

Johnson made an appointment for herself at the Planned Parenthood clinic and remembers clearly what she was told: "You will have some heavy bleeding and period-like cramps. None of it should last too long. You will be back to normal in a couple days." She recalls no discussion of any risks.

Ten minutes after taking the four Misoprostol pills as directed she began to feel pain worse than anything she'd ever experienced. Then came bleeding, "gushing," as Johnson described it. For hours she bled, threw up, cried, and sweated. There was more severe pain, followed by blood clots the size of lemons. "I thought I was dying. This couldn't be normal." Johnson spent the night on the bathroom floor.

The next morning she called the Planned Parenthood office. The nurse told her that what she had experienced was "not abnormal."

For the next eight weeks Johnson continued to experience nausea, blood clots, excruciating cramps, and heavy bleeding.

She returned to her volunteer position at the clinic and, at a management meeting, asked why patients weren't told about the risks. "Well, we don't want to scare them," Johnson's supervisor said.

But she knows the real reason: "Planned Parenthood is not worried about women being 'scared.' … Planned Parenthood is scared. They are scared women will walk out the door if they get accurate and thorough information. Every woman that walks out is lost revenue … that is Planned Parenthood's biggest fear."

Johnson praises Monty Patterson's work exposing the dangers and risks of chemical abortions, and rightly so.

But most women who choose to take the abortion pill and get it from a Planned Parenthood clinic are probably going to trust the information they get in person from their nurse, like Johnson did. Which means they won't get the full story, the whole truth about what they'll likely experience, and the risks involved.

Nor, of course, will they hear about the options and services available to them were they to have their babies. Not one encouraging word.