Fearing that abortion could be outlawed in the country, an abortion “rights” group is teaching women how to commit their own “self-managed abortion” with pills.
“The goal of Reproaction’s campaign on self-managed abortion is to raise awareness of self-managed abortion with pills in order to reduce stigma and build grassroots support to change unjust laws,” reads a page on the Reproaction website. “We see raising public consciousness of self-managed abortion with pills as the first step in the journey to making [those abortion drugs] available to any pregnant person legally, affordably, and conveniently.”
The organization was recently interviewed by the liberal VICE News for an article entitled “How Women Are Training to Do Their Own Abortions.”
“In the Columbia [Missouri] Public Library, just past a room where a Bible study was wrapping up, a group of people gathered in a conference room to learn how to have an abortion at home,” the report opens.
It notes that, since 2016, Reproaction has hosted 21 gatherings in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Virginia, Ohio and Washington, D.C. In addition to hearing from speakers, literature with phrases such as “Abortion care on my own terms” and “Home. Where life happens. Abortion care can happen here, too” is also available for attendees.
Co-founder Pamela Merritt told the outlet that she not only sees self-managed abortion as a backup in case abortion is made illegal but also just another option for current times.
“Just as we will never live in a world where people don’t need abortion — it will always, always be needed — we will never live in a world where everybody wants the same option or choice,” she stated. “We need to be pushing for that across the board and fighting for access in all of those forms, so that people can get the care that works best for them.”
VICE also notes that between March 2018 and August 2019, over 37,000 women in all 50 states contacted an organization that ships pills to mothers seeking to self-handle their abortion.
However, because it is illegal to perform a self-abortion in almost a dozen states, Reproaction writes on its website that mothers should keep quiet about their ingestion of abortion pills.
“To date, there have been at least 20 arrests of women who have ended their own pregnancy outside a medical setting in the United States. A woman, therefore, should not tell medical personnel that she has taken [the pill] or she may be at legal risk,” it states.
‘LOVERS OF THEIR OWN SELVES … LACKING NATURAL AFFECTION’
While the group asserts in an accompanying video that as times have changed, so have advancements in self-abortion, the Bible says that there is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9). Women throughout history have “lacked natural affection” (2 Timothy 3:3) toward their own sons and daughters and have sought out ways to kill their unborn children.
According to reports, prior to Roe v. Wade, “back alley abortions” were a mix of self-abortions and illegal secret operations. Women would often conduct their own attempts to kill the child, such as with coat hangers, feathers, and other blunt objects, as well as other methods, and then would seek out a clandestine doctor or nurse willing to operate illegally if their own numerous attempts were unsuccessful.
One woman “described taking ergotrate, then castor oil, then squatting in scalding hot water, then drinking Everclear alcohol. When these methods failed, she hammered at her stomach with a meat pulverizer before going to an illegal abortionist,” writes Leslie Reagan in her book “When Abortion Was a Crime.”
“Women often tried to induce abortion or cause a miscarriage by throwing themselves down stairs or inflicting violence on themselves. They ingested, douched with or inserted into themselves a chilling variety of chemicals and toxins — from bleach to potassium permanganate to turpentine to gunpowder and whiskey,” another report states. “Knitting needles, crochet hooks, scissors and coat hangers were all among the tools used by women who had no choice but to resort to these means.”
Even in 1854, obstetrician Hugh Lennox Hodge stated of the mothers in his day in a lecture on “Criminal Abortion,” “We can bear testimony, that, in some instances, the woman who has been well educated, who occupies high stations in society, whose influence over others is great, and whose character has not been impugned, will deliberately resort to any and every measure which may effectually destroy her unborn offspring.”
“Ashamed or afraid to apply to the charlatan, who sustains his existence by the price of blood, dreading it may be publicity, she recklessly and boldly adopts measures, however severe and dangerous, for the accomplishment of her unnatural, her guilty purpose,” he lamented.
Hodge outlined that mothers would “make extra muscular efforts by long fatiguing walks, by dancing, running, jumping, kept up as long as possible; she will swallow the most nauseous, irritating, and poisonous drugs, and in some instances, will actually arm herself with the surgeon’s instrument, and operate upon her own body, that she may be delivered of an embryo, for which she has no desire, and whose birth and appearance she dreads.”
“So low, gentleman, is the moral sense of community on this subject,” Hodge lamented. “So ignorant are even the greater number of individuals, that even mothers in many instances shrink not at the commission of this crime, but will voluntarily destroy their own progeny, in violation of every natural sentiment, and in opposition to the laws of God and man.”
Reproaction believes that mothers should be able to commit self-managed abortions via pills or other means without criminal prosecution. Some abolitionist groups — those who seek to outlaw abortion altogether — believe that criminal prosecution should apply no matter who commits the act.
Last April, Texas committee chair Jeff Leach, R-Plano, declined to allow a bill that would have outlawed abortion in the state to proceed for a vote because it “subject[ed] women who undergo abortions to criminal liability.”