Several pro-life researchers have come under fire after publishing a series of studies highlighting the dangers of the abortion pill Mifepristone. Published in the Sage journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology, the studies reveal a correlation between concealed chemical abortions and increased hospital visits. Sage is a research publishing company that publishes numerous academic journals.
Findings from the Mifepristone studies are especially concerning considering chemical abortions now account for well over half of all abortions in the US. Abortionists often encourage patients to attribute their abortion pill injuries to miscarriage during emergency room visits. Injuries can include excessive bleeding, infection, ruptured uterus (if abortion pills are taken later in pregnancy), and retained “products of conception” (i.e., body parts). Using data from patients between 1999 and 2015, one study reveals a “striking pattern” among women whose chemical abortions were misclassified as miscarriages. Compared to those patients properly coded, the number of recurrent hospital admissions was 78% higher in women concealing a chemical abortion. You can read the studies here, here, and here.
Last year, a federal judge in Texas cited two of the studies in a pivotal case in which he suspended the FDA’s approval of Mifepristone. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals modified the ruling, allowing for the continued sale of Mifepristone with certain restrictions. The court found that “thousands of women, and as many as hundreds of thousands, have experienced serious adverse effects as a result of taking the drug, and required surgery or emergency care to treat those effects.” The Fifth Circuit Court’s ruling was temporarily halted by the U.S. Supreme Court, pending the Supreme Court’s review of the case.
The Mifepristone studies have gained considerable visibility as the lawsuit makes its way through the courts. Now that the abortion pill case is set to appear before the Supreme Court next month, the abortion lobby is doing everything it can to keep chemical abortion drugs legal, including suppressing the studies. Bowing to pressure from pro-abortion forces, Sage Publishers retracted the studies earlier this month, citing conflict of interest because the researchers were pro-life, as well as purported defects in data.
The studies’ lead author, Dr. James Studnicki of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, argues that Sage’s retraction has “nothing to do with real science and has everything to do with a political assassination of science.” Dr. Studnicki also noted that, “To date, Sage has advanced no valid objection to their findings and shown no evidence of any major errors, miscalculations, or falsehoods.”
It is no coincidence that the studies were retracted once the Supreme Court agreed to hear the abortion pill case. Whatever Sage may allege as its reason for retracting the studies at this particular time, we recognize the decision for what it is: pandering to big abortion. By suppressing the study, the abortion industry can further perpetuate the lie that chemical abortion is “safe and easy.” Meanwhile, more babies will be killed through this barbaric practice and more women will suffer dangerous complications.
The Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the Mifepristone case, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, on March 26. Life Legal has drafted an amicus brief in the case in support of doctors who not want to be complicit in elective abortion. Pro-life doctors are concerned about being forced to terminate an unborn baby’s life in cases of “incomplete” abortion or fetal anomaly as a consequence of the FDA’s reckless actions.