Abortion by deception

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: coerced abortions.

Abortion pills now account for about two-thirds of all abortions in the U-S. By late 2023, nearly one in five occurred without in-person contact with a medical professional.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Pro-life advocates warn that this easy access is fueling more cases of coercion and abuse, crimes against women and their unborn children. WORLD’s Lauren Canterberry brings us this report.

LAUREN CANTERBERRY: Police in Bloomington, Illinois, responded to a home in August after a call about a medical emergency. When officers arrived they found a woman crying in a bathroom. She was sitting in a pool of blood next to the remains of her tiny baby.

She had been about seven weeks pregnant. And she said her boyfriend gave her abortion drugs without her knowledge after she refused to kill their child. The boyfriend later admitted to police that he bought the pills from another woman and claimed his girlfriend knew he was giving her the deadly drugs.

Authorities charged the 31 year old with two counts of intentional homicide of an unborn child.

KELSEY PRITCHARD: Abortion drug poisoning is a new form of domestic violence that’s on the rise.

Kelsey Pritchard is the political communications director for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. She says that men have coerced or tricked women into abortions for years. But since the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol became easier to buy online, the group has seen the problem get worse.

PRITCHARD: The way that these drugs have just been almost completely unregulated is just enabling that abuse. We’ve seen a case or two of a woman getting them to poison another woman. So this is something we should all care about.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2021 removed any requirements for in-person visits to obtain abortion drugs. Two years later, the administration allowed retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone directly to women. Online groups started shipping them in record numbers…even into pro-life states. These changes are still in effect.

Earlier this summer, former Planned Parenthood center director and now pro-life activist Abby Johnson posted a video online showing how easy it was for her to order the pills. Johnson lives in Texas, where most babies are protected from abortion, but she still got the drugs in a few short days without proving who she was.

JOHNSON: I didn’t put in the correct date of birth. I wasn’t asked for an ID. I could have put in any information I wanted, because I was never asked for any sort of verification.

Johnson ordered the drugs from the European abortion pill company Aid Access. In August, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that more than 80% of Aid Access’ abortion drug shipments went to states with pro-life laws.

Texas is trying to shut off the supply. Last month, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a measure allowing private citizens to sue individuals and organizations that ship abortion drugs into the state.

Meanwhile, Texas resident Liana Davis in August brought a federal lawsuit against Aid Access, its founder Rebecca Gomperts, and Davis’ former boyfriend, Christopher Cooprider. Davis claims they committed felony murder and violated the federal Comstock Act, which prohibits mailing abortion-inducing drugs. Davis says her unborn baby died in April after Cooprider allegedly dissolved abortion drugs into her drink. According to court documents, Cooprider bought the drugs online using his own name, though he denies all allegations.

Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Melanie Israel says the federal government must intervene to regulate the deadly drugs.

ISRAEL: If the FDA could step in and at the very least return to that in-person dispensing requirement, it wouldn’t fix all of the issues but it sure would fix a lot.

Melanie Israel says in-person visits could also help identify women who are being trafficked or who are in abusive relationships. Abortion facilities, OB-GYNs, and pro-life pregnancy centers often report such cases, but mail-order abortion pills make it easier for abusers to hide their crimes.

ISRAEL: For many women, that is the only lifeline they get.

Prosecuting cases of forced or coerced abortions can be difficult if a woman does not know for sure if she miscarried or was given abortion drugs without her consent.

ISRAEL: I think a lot of these women suspect something because their partner had been so insistent they get it beforehand.

A patchwork of laws across the country complicates litigating cases of coerced or forced abortion. Some states recognize the personhood of unborn children, while others do not.

Often, the biggest challenge to bringing cases forward is that women are afraid to speak out. Here’s Mary Browning, legal adviser to Operation Outcry with the Justice Foundation.

BROWNING: Part of the battle here is to get the truth out so that women that are out there suffering in silence … they feel like they have a place that they can turn to, that they can speak up, that they won't be shunned or judged or criticized. There are a number of people that are willing to bring the lawsuits if the women will come forward.

Browning says that, at the very least, forcing a woman to have an abortion against her will should be considered assault. She says women who are forced to abort their babies face deep, complex pain. While they are mourning their child’s death, they are also coming to terms with the loss of safety they once felt in their relationship.

BROWNING: There's this mixture of the sense of betrayal, the sense of having a trust violated, and then the confusion of loving someone and coming to grips with the fact that they would do something like this. There's significant importance to getting healing in the aftermath of abortion, no matter how you came to that place.

For WORLD, I’m Lauren Canterberry.

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