(NRLC) By an overwhelming vote of 32-2, the South Dakota Senate Wednesday passed a bill that requires women undergoing a chemical abortion to have an in-person examination by a physician. Having already passed the House, it now goes to the desk of pro-life Gov. Kristi Noem.
Gov. Noem tweeted:
My legislation to ban telemedicine abortions passed the Senate and is on its way to my desk! With this bill, we will protect both unborn babies and their mothers from this dangerous procedure.
State action is vitally important because the long-standing protections for women have been eliminated. Nancy Flanders noted:
In December, the Food and Drug Administration loosened REMS (Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy) safety rules that had been in place regarding the abortion pill for 20 years, no longer requiring an in-person visit with a doctor, and allowing the drug regimen to be distributed by mail. The FDA said that its data from adverse events (AE) reporting is what led to the decision. However, AAPLOG has said there is a “significant discrepancy” between the FDA data and reporting from the very sources that gave the FDA the data it is citing.
To be clear, Biden’s FDA made the suspension permanent, independent of the status of the virus, agreeing that various studies submitted by abortion activists had shown telemedical abortion sufficiently to be “safe and effective.” In their rush to make “DIY” abortions possible, proponents dismiss the very real dangers that accompany a woman not seeing a physician.
This cutting corners is nothing new for the Abortion Industry.
“American abortion activists had pushed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to follow the lead of their British counterparts in March 2020 in allowing abortion pills to be prescribed and mailed to a woman’s home after a video or phone consultation,” explained Dr. Randall K. O’Bannon, Director of Education & Research. “This ostensibly was to protect her from exposure to the virus she might encounter coming in for an in-person clinical visit.”
But while the American government has removed limits on chemical abortions by telemedicine, offering blithe assurances of safety, “health ministers from England have announced that come August 30, 2022, they will be reinstating limits on the abortion “pills by post” scheme they had temporarily allowed during the COVID pandemic.”
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Dr. O’Bannon added additional context:
Studies claiming to show telemedical abortions are “safe and effective” lose track of far too many patients to be able to confidently make such claims. If those women simply ignore the prescriber and show up at their local Emergency Room and follow the abortionist’s advice not to mention the abortion pills, those complications will not be attributed to mifepristone and that data will be missing from any official assessment.
Studies in Britain (and some earlier in the U.S.) looking at ER visits have shown the incidence of incomplete abortion, hemorrhage, surgical intervention to be much higher than that reported by the abortion industry and abortion pill advocates.
Because they do not come into the clinic to pick up their pills, they do not have the opportunity to have a physical exam or an ultrasound. These are critical 1) to assure the patient she does not have an ectopic pregnancy, which these pills do not treat and pose a serious danger if they rupture, and 2) to determine the gestational age of the child, as the “effectiveness” of the abortion pill drops and the risk of complications increases as the pregnancy progresses.
According to the Associated Press’s Stephen Groves, “On the Senate floor Wednesday, Republican Sen. Erin Tobin argued that telemedicine consultations for abortion risked women’s health because it would raise the chances doctors miss conditions that could complicate the procedure.”
Gov. Noem tweeted:
With this bill, we will protect both unborn babies and their mothers from this dangerous procedure.
Editor's note: This article was published by the National Right to Life Committee and is reprinted with permission. Heartbeat International manages the Abortion Pill Rescue® Network (APRN) and Pregnancy Help News.
