The women tricked into abortions

After seeing her 6-week-old unborn baby’s strong heartbeat on a sonogram last October, a Texas woman met her boyfriend—a married man—at a Benbrook coffee shop. Investigators later said that surveillance footage showed the boyfriend, identified as Justin Anthony Banta, pouring an unknown, white substance into her drink before she arrived. Banta also allegedly gave her a plate of homemade cookies. She took the cookies but did not eat any.

The next day, the woman began experiencing heavy bleeding, and after visiting the emergency room, she lost her baby on Oct. 19. She accuses Banta of putting abortion drugs in her drink, and authorities say FBI testing found the abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol in the cookies. The woman also told authorities that she had earlier refused Banta’s suggestion that he order abortion drugs online for her.

Banta now faces capital murder charges in Texas. He says he is innocent, with his attorney calling the accusations “purely fictional.”

As pro-abortion groups push to deregulate abortion pills, some women face the greater possibility that a sexual partner could kill their unborn babies without their knowledge or consent. Pro-life advocates say the alarming trend is an expected next step in the push to erode protections for unborn children.

In August, police in Illinois charged Emerson Evans with homicide after he reportedly poisoned his girlfriend with abortion drugs, killing her 7-week-old unborn baby. And last year, Houston attorney Mason Herring was sentenced to 180 days in jail after he repeatedly put abortion drugs into his pregnant wife’s drinks. Their daughter survived but was born prematurely and has to attend therapy multiple times a week due to developmental delays.

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration under the Biden White House in 2021 removed any requirements for in-person visits to obtain the abortion drug mifepristone, pro-life advocates expected terrible consequences not only for unborn babies but for their mothers. “It was so obvious that this was going to facilitate more coercion, more unwanted abortions,” said Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs for the Charlotte Lozier Institute. “Abortion, of course, has always been an instrument of coercion for men to abuse women.”

A 2023 Charlotte Lozier Institute study found that nearly 70% of women with a history of abortion said it was inconsistent with their values and desires, while one-quarter of the women surveyed said their abortion was unwanted or coerced. Another report from the organization revealed that over 60% of women who had an abortion faced intense pressure to do so, often from a male partner or family member.

In 2023, the Biden administration also allowed retail pharmacies to dispense mifepristone directly to women, and online groups started shipping the pills even into pro-life states. “The stories we’re starting to hear—I think we’ve discovered this is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Skop.

Former Planned Parenthood center director and now pro-life activist Abby Johnson posted a video this summer showing her attempt to find out how easy it could be to obtain abortion pills. Johnson lives in Texas, where state law protects babies in almost all cases. But abortion groups have mailed mifepristone and misoprostol into the state with little to no safety measures to control who receives the drugs or who takes them. Johnson ordered the abortion pills via the European abortion company Aid Access and said she received them days later.

“I didn’t put in the correct date of birth. I wasn’t asked for an ID,” she said in a June video. “I could have put in any information I wanted, because I was never asked for any sort of verification.”

In August, Texas resident Liana Davis sued Aid Access, its founder Rebecca Gomperts, and a U.S. Marine named Christopher Cooprider in federal court. Davis claims Cooprider dissolved abortion pills he bought online into her drink in April and killed their unborn baby when Davis was about eight weeks pregnant. She had repeatedly told Cooprider she wanted to keep the baby despite his alleged attempts to pressure her to get an abortion.

Davis’ lawsuit claims the defendants committed felony murder and violated the federal Comstock Act, which prohibits anyone from mailing abortion-inducing drugs. Cooprider filed a countersuit and claimed Davis faked the incident to strengthen Texas lawmakers’ efforts to pass pro-life laws. Aid Access did not respond to WORLD’s request for comment in time for publication.

Last Wednesday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law a measure allowing private citizens to sue individuals and organizations that ship abortion drugs into the state.

Abortion facilities and women’s health clinics often report cases of domestic abuse and sex trafficking, said Heritage Foundation visiting fellow Melanie Israel. “For many women that is the only lifeline they get,” Israel said.

But the abortion pill helps traffickers and abusers hide the evidence of their crimes, and women and girls may not know for sure if they had an abortion or a miscarriage.

“I think a lot of these women suspect something because their partner had been so insistent they get it beforehand,” Israel said. “Maybe those red flags were already up. But again, we can only wonder how many abusers get away with it and we just don’t know definitively.”

While symptoms of a chemical abortion can appear similar to a miscarriage, women who take abortion drugs often report sudden and intense pain, said Mary Browning, who works as a legal adviser to Operation Outcry with the Justice Foundation. Lawmakers have called on health officials to investigate the risks women face when taking the pills. Earlier this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. assured the Senate Finance Committee that the FDA was reviewing the safety of mifepristone.

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.

Browning said that forcing a woman to kill her unborn baby against her will is, at the very least, assaultive behavior. But while some legal groups and individuals are willing to bring lawsuits on women’s behalf, Browning worries the cultural narrative of abortion as a right has made women afraid to seek justice. “Part of the battle here is to get the truth out so that women that are out there suffering in silence … feel like they have a place that they can turn to,” she said.

Women who are forced to abort their babies are especially vulnerable to mental health and relationship problems, Browning said, as they are mourning not only their child’s death but also the loss of relational safety they once felt. “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,” she said. “There’s significant importance to getting healing in the aftermath of abortion, no matter how you came to that place.”