When the Supreme Court rules in favor of allowing states to criminalize abortion after 15 weeks, antiabortionists will increase their disinformation about problems that typically emerge in the second trimester of pregnancy. The most blatant deception so far is their claim that an embryo attached somewhere outside the womb in an ectopic pregnancy can be transferred to the uterus. This bizarre belief is up there with Todd Aiken’s contention that a woman has the ability to stave off any pregnancy that would be caused by “legitimate rape.”
From what has happened in South America, we already know what antiabortionists will say about second trimester circumstances where the life of the pregnant woman is at risk. The antiabortionists claim that both the unborn and the pregnant woman can be saved and that they want to “save them both.” If they really believed that slogan, everywhere there is a law protecting the life of the unborn there would be a parallel law protecting the life of the pregnant woman, such as: “Any medical practitioner who fails to provide a timely abortion and thereby contributes to the death of a pregnant woman, is subject to not more than ten years in prison and a $100, 000 fine.”
As long as there is severe criminal punishment for abortion and no criminal punishment for allowing a woman to die for lack of an abortion, most physicians well choose what is in their self interest, whatever will keep them out of prison and financially solvent. Being at risk for a small rise in malpractice insurance is a small price to pay for avoiding the possibility of ten years in prison. Where abortion is outlawed, physicians who listen to the heartbeat of the fetus while ignoring a dying woman, are doing the right thing in terms of their own crude self-interest.
When the Supreme Court allows a 15 week ban, a ban on second trimester abortions the GOP will have to focus its persecution on an extremely vulnerable group of women who typically are unable to abort in the first trimester. This group includes children and women who have been raped, victims of domestic violence and other forms of abuse, women with ectopic pregnancies, women carrying a fetus with severe anomalies, and women undergoing stalled miscarriages, to name a few. The Republicans will especially target women who miscarry because abortion by means of abortion pills cannot be distinguished from miscarriage. Or, to state it medically, abortion induced by abortion pills is indistinguishable from spontaneous abortion.
Abortion pills (misoprostel and mifepristone) have changed the dynamics of obtaining an abortion, whether legal or illegal. Abortions prior to ten weeks of pregnancy can be safer, more convenient, and more private than they have ever been. Stopping the distribution of abortion pills will extremely difficult
Antiabortionists will therefore hurl massive amounts of abortion pill disinformation.
Simply put, abortion pills provoke menstruation, a natural process that women of reproductive age experience once a month. Unbeknownst to most, this process frequently rids the woman of an embryo, in which case it is sometimes medically described as a spontaneous abortion. Unlike abortions later on in a pregnancy, which or more similar to childbirth, early abortions using abortion pills simply cause the expulsion a discharge that is more or less liquid. As a result complications from the use of abortion pills are extremely rare.
Abortion pills can be ordered online and taken without medical supervision. Millions of women all over the world have successfully and safely used this method to terminate a pregnancy. Antiabortionists will therefore of course dispute the safety of abortion pills. Countering this disinformation will best be achieved through action. Right now Code C is plastering the NYC subway system with advertisements for abortion pills.
Why New York, which is a right-to-birth-control state? For two reasons. First, the more people who use abortion pills, the quicker their acceptance everywhere. Second, there will be a flood of pregnant people traveling to pro-choice states. Physicians and others who have exhausted themselves themselves over decades caring for patients in abortion clinics will be even more challenged. If a large number of people who can do so opt for a self-managed abortion, Planned Parenthood and others who provide second semester abortions will be freed up tp provide abortions for residents from states where second and third trimester abortions have been made illegal or extremely difficult to obtain.
Technology is on our side, post-Roe. And we have the experience of other countries to learn from. This is a fight that we can win.