Do It Yourself (DIY) projects have grown more common with television and the internet now providing videos and instructions for doing anything, from fixing your dishwasher, to making a purse, to changing the oil in your car!  However, the latest Do It Yourself project being promoted online provides instructions in killing – your unborn baby.

Pro-abortion groups are launching an online website specifically to instruct women in how to induce an abortion to end an unwanted pregnancy.  The project— Women Help Women USA: Self-managed Abortion Safe and Supported-SASS—is described by organizers as “the first service to provide one-on-one support from trained counselors to women in the U.S. seeking to end their own pregnancies.”

In addition to pro-abortion support for DIY abortions, researchers from Ipas and Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) are pursuing a plan to make RU-486 abortion pills accessible as Over-the-Counter (OTC) drugs based on research entitled,  “A research agenda for moving early medical pregnancy termination over the counter.”

Citing concern that the Trump administration will make abortion illegal, along with the increase in state laws regulating access to abortion, abortion supporters are now reversing their often cited logic that abortion is a private matter between a woman and her doctor. By removing the doctor from the procedure, DIY and OTC abortion undercuts the rationale Justice Blackmun used as the basis for the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized a woman’s right to abortion.

When I first heard of DIY abortions I immediately thought of women protesting in front of the US Supreme Court, holding wire coat hangers high in the air, chanting “never go back,” and claiming pro-lifers don’t care about women.  Now the much-talked about unsafe “back alley” abortions, which the legalization of abortion was supposed to end, are found in women’s very homes.

DIY abortions expose women to numerous physical and emotional problems. In both the DIY and OTC RU-486 abortions two powerful drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, are used to cause the abortion. Mifepristone inhibits progesterone, without which the placenta is denied nutrition, which starves the baby, causing it to die. The second drug, misoprostol is taken 24 to 72 hours later and causes contractions that expel the baby from the uterus.

In DIY and OTC abortions, the process takes place at home with no medical oversight. And, based on the Silent No More testimonies of women who have undergone RU-486 abortions, it is a painful and scary procedure to go through alone. The mother can experience heavy bleeding, and the cramping is often severe. It is common for the woman to identify the baby when it is expelled, which creates an emotional tug of war as to whether she should rescue it or flush it down the toilet. The trauma associated with abortion is bad enough when it is done in a clinic, but when you are also the abortionist and the undertaker, it is obvious that it will leave a scar.

If something goes wrong physically, such as excessive bleeding or low blood pressure, the woman is supposed to email a website or potentially decide if and when she should seek medical help.  It is important to note, that according to the Centers for Disease Control, at least 14 women have died from RU-486 abortions.

Until RU-486 is available OTC, a woman must order DIY abortion medications online, which calls into question the quality of the drugs she will ingest and whether they are in fact the correct ones in the correct dosage. It also calls into question the ability for someone other than the woman to access the drugs and force the woman to take them or give them to her without her knowledge or consent.

As I consider this latest endeavor to ensure women have access to abortion, I am struck by the emphasis being the importance of promoting access to abortion at all costs instead of focusing on helping a woman facing an unplanned pregnancy deal with her actual circumstances. There is no mention or offer for other types of support for a pregnant mother, other than the tools needed to kill her child.

The advocacy for DIY abortions exposes the level abortion supporters are willing to go to kill children, even if it means putting women in danger. It is beyond me how anyone who cares about women could think DIY and OTC abortions are a good idea.

Written by Deacon Georgette Forney, President of Anglicans for Life