Planned Parenthood’s latest annual report covering its “services” for the 2022–2023 fiscal year should be eye-opening for many.

The largest abortion chain in the U.S. received nearly 700 million of our tax dollars.

It committed 392,715 abortions.

And it claimed that “863,000 users accessed abortionfinder.org — an authoritative source for abortion information from Planned Parenthood and independent clinics — from Planned Parenthood’s websites between July 2022–June 2023.”  This means that Planned Parenthood helped nearly one million women find abortion services when it could not provide them.

Seventy percent of the report is focused on abortion: killing a preborn baby as “healthcare” or a “right,” along with read snide comments about shielding patients from “ads from crisis pregnancy centers and anti-abortion rights sources.”  We read the incessant lies PP tells women about abortion and their bodies.

Yet one thing was obviously missing.  This report made no mention at all of any abortion pill statistics.

The abortion pill is actually a two-pill regimen that the mother can take until her baby is 70 days gestation.  The mother will first take mifepristone, which stops the baby from growing and starves and kills him.  The second pill is misoprostol, which is taken 24–48 hours after the mifepristone; it causes bleeding and cramping and expels the dead baby.

There has been significant controversy over these pills in the last several years as their usage has increased.  And in 2021, the Biden administration reversed a Trump-era ban on mailing these pills, thus making it much easier for women to get them and kill their babies at home.  Since then, their use has skyrocketed.

The Guttmacher Institute, the research arm of Planned Parenthood, found that “research from the Monthly Abortion Provision Study shows that there were approximately 642,700 medication abortions in the United States in 2023, accounting for 63% of all abortions in the formal health care system.”  But not all states have to report, so we know that that number is much higher. 

Guttmacher then went on to claim that “decades of research have established that medication abortion using mifepristone is highly safe and effective.”

We know that the implication of the word “effective” means the pills result in a dead baby.  They do their job; they kill a human being.  So they are clearly not safe for the baby.

But are they safe for women?  No, of course not.  Aside from the mental health damage that having an abortion can inflict on a mother, there are worrisome and often detrimental side-effects from the abortion pill.  These include heavy bleeding, nausea, dizziness, chest pain, fever/chills, confusion, shortness of breath, infection, blood clots, sepsis, and much more.  Yet the worst part is that the mother must pass her dead baby’s body at home, something she does when she is most likely alone.

Former abortion worker Abby Johnson wrote of her own horror story after taking medication abortion:

Suddenly, I was blindsided by a pain in my abdomen like nothing I had ever experienced before or since. Then came the blood in a proverbial tidal wave. Somehow, I managed to hobble to the bathroom; the agony compounded with every step. The rush of blood was terrifying and unrelenting. ...  

All I could do was sit on the toilet, convinced that I was bleeding out. Intense pain would rack my stomach, and then lessen a bit. But the bleeding was constant. My misery was multiplied when the nausea hit. There I was, profusely bleeding into the toilet while vomiting into my bathroom trashcan. In between the flushing and heaving, I wept.

The dangers do not stop at these physical and psychological risks.  When a woman is mailed these pills without seeing a doctor, she forgoes the in-person exam with her doctor, who would be able to detect if she has an ectopic pregnancy.  The abortion pill does not end an ectopic pregnancy, which could lead to health complications or death for the mother should a rupture occur.

This is one of the many reasons that some states have enacted laws regarding these pills.  As of March 2024, “medication abortion is legal in 36 states and Washington, D.C., but in 15 of those states it must be prescribed by a doctor, not other clinicians.”

Further dangers arise in states where a woman does not have to be seen in person, as anyone could order the pills and even slip them into the food or drink of an unsuspecting pregnant woman.  This is not unheard of for abusive husbands or even sex-traffickers.  And then there are illegal and disreputable sites that offer the abortion pill to anyone who wants to buy them online.

We may never know why Planned Parenthood omitted abortion pill numbers from its report, but we do know that abortion—no matter how it’s committed—is a huge moneymaker for the organization.

Society has opened Pandora’s box with the abortion pill, and the impacts are significant.  While there is no way to know just how many babies are dying because of these pills and how many mothers are harmed by them, we do know that the numbers must be staggering.  And we know that Planned Parenthood will continue to do all it can to get these pills into the hands of young, desperate women.  That is why we must work to shut it down for good.

Susan Ciancio is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and has worked as a writer and editor for over 20 years; 14 of those years have been in the pro-life sector.  Currently, she is the editor of American Life League’s Celebrate Life Magazine, the nation’s premier Catholic pro-life magazine.  She is also the executive editor of ALL’s Culture of Life Studies Program, a pre-K–12 Catholic pro-life education organization.

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