New data from Reuters shows more women are using an abortifacient to end their pregnancies — referred to as “abortion medication,” which seems a bit contradictory — than ever before, even though abortions overall are still declining. The data reveal not only the current state of abortion in this country, but also the effect pro-life lawmakers have had on the debate, and what lays ahead for the movement.

What is ‘abortion medication’?

Reuters, via Huffington Post, reported, “Medication abortion involves two drugs, taken over a day or two. The first, mifepristone, blocks the pregnancy sustaining hormone progesterone. The second, misoprostol, induces uterine contractions. Studies have shown medical abortions are effective up to 95 percent of the time.”

These drugs have been available for some time, but fewer FDA regulations that occurred in March increased availability and popularity. Doctors can now prescribe the pills up until mom is 10 weeks along, instead of seven. The guidelines also changed to reduce the “number of required medical visits and allowed trained professionals other than physicians, including nurse practitioners, to dispense the pills.” Its usage is now at 43 percent, up from 35 percent just six years ago. States like Michigan and Iowa have very few restrictions on the drugs, and so “medication abortions” make up nearly half of all abortions in Michigan and a little more than half in Iowa.

Why? Convenience. Tammi Kromenaker, director of the Red River Women’s Clinic in Fargo, North Dakota, said, “Women who ask for the medication prefer it because they can end a pregnancy at home, with a partner, in a manner more like a miscarriage.”

That said, the overall U.S. abortion rate continues to decline. In 2008, there were roughly 19 terminations per 1,000 women aged 15-44. In 2011, that had dropped to 16.9. And last year, it was at its lowest point since 1973.

What does this mean?

Let’s face it: This “medication” makes abortion even more convenient than it already is. Contrary to liberal talking points, abortions are quite easy to receive. In fact, in some states, teens don’t even have to tell their parents they’re getting one. Folks in Florida are up in arms that the Florida Supreme Court is considering implementing a 24-hour waiting period before a woman can have an abortion.

Pro-choice advocates will no doubt spin this bit of “good news” to their advantage, claiming once and for all that determined women will abort their children and no amount of effort from pro-life advocates can stop it. But this type of spin is normal.

Remember back in September, when Ushma D. Upadhyay, an associate professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences at the University of California, San Francisco, penned The New York Times op-ed about these very abortion drugs? She said, “my colleagues and I found that such laws are not just covers for restricting abortion access — they can actually harm women’s health.” Upadhayay continued, saying:

We need scientific research that evaluates these laws’ actual effects on women and their health. If state legislatures want to create policies around abortion, they should be based on evidence. When policy is not based on science, American women pay the price.

Since more women than ever before are utilizing these drugs, I guess American women aren’t suffering (she didn’t make the case for it regardless).

The Frisky observed “Just think about it: while TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers) laws were exploding across the nation, reasonable guidelines for abortion pills were being developed. Today, more than 2.75 million U.S. women have used abortion pills since they were approved in 2000.” The Frisky went so far as to say it shows that regardless of what pro-life advocates do, nothing will stop a woman determined to end the life of her unborn child.

TRAP laws resulted in hundreds of clinics across the country shutting down and have forced women seeking abortions to travel long distances to obtain the procedure, delay having the procedure potentially until the second trimester, or to self-induce. The anti-abortion laws may close clinics, but they fail to actually achieve the anti-choice movement’s goal of stopping abortions from happening.

While fewer abortion clinics, due to TRAP laws, may have contributed to the rise in “abortion medication,” I’m not sure it supports the idea that pro-life advocates are failing. After all, there abortions have at their lowest number since Roe v. Wade. So women are having fewer abortions. Why this is happening seems more multi-faceted.

Pro-life lawmakers should press on, along with educators and families

The fact that the usage increased only when FDA regulations were reduced shows the power of regulation and legislation. As a small-government conservative, I’m hesitant to encourage regulation just to take up space. But pro-life lawmakers’ strategies to help reduce abortions, whether by defunding Planned Parenthood or imposing strict guidelines of the condition of abortion clinics, have contributed to the national reduction of abortions.

Lawmakers should continue to reduce abortions, by whatever creative, persuasive, and legal means necessary. A few mind-boggling videos caused a House Committee to investigate Planned Parenthood in 2015 and at least a dozen states have voted to defund it. I’d say that’s one way to accomplish the “anti-choice movement’s goal of stopping abortion from happening.”

It’s imperative women understand what an abortion entails and when life begins. Knowledge and education, via schools, communities, families, and friends, are key ways to discuss this “abortion medication.” If life begins at conception, which science supports, these drugs are ending a tiny baby’s life. This cannot be overstated. As I said in this space a few months ago,

his former abortion doctor explains that the abortion pill slowly starves a baby to death. ‘Dr. Anthony Levatino, an OB/GYN who did over 1200 abortions, uses medically accurate animations inside the womb to show how the abortion pill slowly starves a baby to death over a period of days. He also details how developed the baby is at this early stage and the abortion pill’s potentially dangerous effects on the mother.’

While a mother can’t see much at an ultrasound under 10 weeks — research show women are often moved to change their minds after seeing her baby on an ultrasound — she may be able to hear a heartbeat, which is often exciting. Finally, the most obvious answer for many pro-life advocates, and the hardest for a mother-to-be is to encourage mom to forgo the use of any “abortion medication,” and bring the baby to term. There are between one and two million couples waiting to adopt. There is a way that is safe for everyone, including mom and baby.

Pro-life advocates should not be discouraged at the news that “abortion medication” is increasing, but neither should they ignore what it says about a woman’s desire for convenience and privacy. While legislation can be a helpful tool in decreasing abortions, education, knowledge and support are key in continuing to reduce the number of aborted babies nationwide. (For more from the author of “Abortions Are Down but Abortion Medication Use Is on the Rise. What Are Pro-Lifers to Do?” please click HERE)

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On the abortion issue alone, I believe that Christians should vote for Donald Trump as the only possible candidate to defeat the march of the death culture Hillary Clinton would lead if she were to be elected.

Pro-abortion feminists are growing ever more militant in their make-believe world that sees men and women as bitter rivals, if not outright enemies. They seem to view everything through a gender prism; people have to support Clinton not because she has a better agenda but because she’s a woman.

Don’t get me wrong; they also think she has a better agenda, but they are constantly thinking and speaking in terms of gender identification and loyalty. And all too often, they demonize men in the process — whom they perceive as a threat to women’s rights.

This adversarial culture the left fosters is not limited to gender. It includes race, economic “status” and every other imaginable category that can aid in their politics of division, on which their political power depends. WikiLeaks’ revelations have confirmed that such polarization is integral to the modern Democratic Party’s grand strategy for eventual one-party dominance.

If Clinton wins this election — despite the tsunami of corruption and scandal that surrounds her, in which she is knee-deep — she will believe she is politically bulletproof, and for good reason. She and husband Bill would never have behaved as cavalierly and recklessly as they have if they didn’t think they possess a lifetime get-out-of-jail-free card. I shudder to think what their mindset would be if Hillary were to be victorious.

She would pursue the abortion-on-demand agenda with abandon. She would appoint radical judges at all levels who share her worldview and her determination that the courts continue to rewrite laws that thwart the will of the people. She’d accelerate Barack Obama’s war on religious liberty through the courts, lawless executive orders and other administrative avenues.

Some will say I’m exaggerating here — that the left just wants to protect beleaguered women, who should have sole sovereignty over their “reproductive” decisions. Leftists aren’t pro-abortion; they have benign motives, focused exclusively on the mother’s choice and health.

Well, that may be true of some rank-and-file Democratic voters. But most leftist politicians, thought leaders and power brokers are pro-abortion extremists and coldly calculating in promoting their goals. They know that protecting the mother’s health is rarely involved in abortion decisions. They know that pro-life advocates, many of whom are women, don’t believe in suppressing women. But they also know that by characterizing pro-lifers as women-hating, totalitarian ogres, they will increase the odds that they’ll keep moving their pro-abortion football down the field toward the end zone marked “death.”

I wrote in 2004:

People I’ve debated on the (abortion) issue have generally taken the position that the baby in the womb is “potential life” or a clump of cells or a zygote. They seemed to sense that they would have no legitimate argument in favor of abortion if they admitted the baby was a life. But as secular and humanistic influences have gained ascendance in our culture, I’ve anticipated the day when moral relativists would become so brazen as to discard their reliance on the argument that “the fetus is not a human life.” Indeed, with the breathtaking scientific and technological advances — such as the discovery that a baby in the womb smiles and feels pain — it’s practically inevitable that the pro-aborts will be forced to abandon that argument.

Fast-forward 12 years and see how inevitable it actually was. Mary Elizabeth Williams, writing on Salon, asks, “So what if abortion ends life?” She writes: “Of all the diabolically clever moves the anti-choice lobby has ever pulled, surely one of the greatest has been its consistent co-opting of the word ‘life.’ Life! Who wants to argue with that? Who wants (to) be on the side of … not-life? … The ‘life’ conversation is often too thorny to even broach. Yet I know that throughout my own pregnancies, I never wavered for a moment in the belief that I was carrying a human life inside of me. I believe that’s what a fetus is: a human life. And that doesn’t make me one iota less solidly pro-choice.”

I don’t like quoting just some of her statements and don’t want to mislead as to her intent, so I strongly urge you to read her entire piece, where you can judge for yourselves these comments in context. But I must share one more passage. She writes:

Here’s the complicated reality in which we live: All life is not equal. That’s a difficult thing for liberals like me to talk about, lest we wind up looking like death-panel-loving, kill-your grandma-and-your-precious-baby storm troopers. Yet a fetus can be a human life without having the same rights as the woman in whose body it resides. She’s the boss. Her life and what is right for her circumstances and her health should automatically trump the rights of the non-autonomous entity inside of her. Always.

I could comment on those assertions for hours but have run out of space. What do you mean “lest” you wind up looking as if you love death panels? That’s exactly what you look like, as cold and heartless as your words on the page.

Leftist advocates will applaud such amoral muscle flexing, but I appeal to less extreme liberals, Democrats and never-Trumpers to understand the depth of the depravity of this mindset and understand that if you help elect Clinton, you are, among many other frightening things, empowering this evil worldview. Should I refrain from calling it “evil” for fear of offense or being labeled intolerant or an extremist? I think not. You can take that up with the babies whose lives are hanging in the balance. (For more from the author of “Hillary Clinton and the Extreme Abortionist Culture” please click HERE)

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A new study by Reuters found that the rate of women aborting their children by medication has greatly increased, citing “innovative dispensing efforts in some states,” including abortion prescriptions by webcam or over the phone.

Medication abortions rose from 35 percent of Planned Parenthood’s abortions in 2010 to 43 percent of their abortions in 2014. Reuters speculates that new federal prescribing guidelines for the abortion pill Mifeprex will make that rate even higher now. In the last few months, demand for medication abortions tripled in Ohio, Texas and North Dakota, the three states most affected by that change, with some clinics reporting that almost one-third of abortions are now performed with the drugs, the news service reported.

Abortion proponents tout the switch as a boon to women’s health and safety. Pro-life doctors are concerned that this is willful ignorance of the dangers women face when they abort without medical supervision.

“Women who have had these abortions describe them far more difficult, painful, and bloody than the abortion industry led them to believe,” said Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., Director of Education & Research at National Right to Life, in an email to The Stream. “These abortions are not only bloody and painful, but dangerous. We already know of more than a dozen women, several of them by name, who have died after using these drugs to induce their abortions. Some have bled to death, some have had undiscovered ectopic pregnancies rupture and others have died from aggressive rare infections. The more it is used, the more women will be exposed to these dangers.”

While more clinics are advertising the pills as an easy way to end a pregnancy — one poster reads: “Abortion. Yeah, we do that.” — doctors warn that abortion by pill is more traumatic than these women are prepared for. “It isn’t just the shock and betrayal that they’ll feel when they begin to cramp and bleed, when the process and the pain drag on and on, but when they encounter their aborted babies, when they see with their own eyes the bodies of their children, their eyes, their tiny fists, when they realize the lies that they have been told and the enormous loss that has really taken place,” O’Bannon said.

Having these abortions by web-cam or by mail won’t make them any better, just more dangerous as women scramble to find medical help who understand and can treat the unique problems associated with chemical abortions. They act as if having this at home will make the process comfortable and cozy, but the reality is that a woman is more likely to feel alone and abandoned at precisely the time when she is most vulnerable, when she is in the most pain and the most danger, trying to figure out if what she’s going through is just ordinary bodily assault of the abortion or something even worse.

Donna Harrison, MD, executive director of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told The Stream in an email, “The continuous fantasy that drug induced abortions are simple is the oft repeated mantra of the abortion industry. Drug-induced abortions are neither safe nor easy.”

Pro-life groups concerned for women’s safety warn that the new FDA guidelines mean the procedure will be riskier as doctors are not required to be physically present to the women to whom they prescribe the abortion pill. Abortion performed in an abortion facility by a doctor had its risks, O’Bannon noted, but the doctor knew them and how to treat them. “With web-cam abortions and abortions by mail, with abortionists getting less and less involved with their patients, it isn’t clear that any of this remains any more.”

Harrison cited a recent study in the Journal of Clinical and Diagnostic Research, which found that “the most common presentation was excessive bleeding (77.5%). Severe anemia was found in 12.5% of the patients and 5% of patients presented with shock…62.5% of the patients were found to have incomplete abortion, 22.5% had failed abortion and 7.5% of patients had incomplete abortion with sepsis. Surgical evacuation was performed in 67.5% of the patients, whereas 12.5% of the patients required surgical evacuation with blood transfusion.”

The study recommended against unsupervised medical abortion. “The abortion industry wants to minimize knowledge about these risks, and minimize involvement of physicians, in order to keep down their costs and boost their income,” Harrison said. “It is tragic that women are misled about the serious complications, including at least a ten-times increased risk of death from drug-induced abortion as compared with surgical abortion.”

“All of this suffering for women is for the convenience and profit of the abortionist,” Harrison concluded. (For more from the author of “Abortion by Pill on the Rise, Putting Women’s Health at Greater Risk” please click HERE)

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