In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling rejecting challenges to FDA regulation of abortion drugs, women’s health is now hanging in the balance. It is only a matter of time before an innocent, unsuspecting, desperate woman is injured by using abortion pills. Essentially, only such an injury would be sufficient for standing before a court of law, in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion on Thursday.
But what an injury… mail-order abortion pills that do not require any type of doctor visit to determine how far along the pregnancy is or what medical factors affect the mother’s health allow a woman to get the drugs easily, take them at home, often alone, result in a high volume of bleeding, intense pain, which ends with the trauma of expelling a human baby. A host of pain, anxiety, and danger is part of what is essentially a self-abortion.
There’s non-medical support available for such an abortion today. Support in pregnancy and birth have always been important in the use of a doula, but the rising use of abortion doulas took me by surprise. NPR recently reported that North Carolina’s practicing abortion doulas have skyrocketed to 40 around the state (a state that has legalized a 12 week limit on abortion). Doula is the Greek word for female helper, particularly in pregnancy and childbirth. In modern usage she is a non-medical professional who walks beside the pregnant mother. According to WebMD a birth doula provides emotional and physical support to a mother before, during, and after pregnancy and childbirth, assisting and advocating for the mother. LAFdoula Postpartum Services offers that a postpartum doula is a “coach and mentor” for a new mom “with best practices for feeding… building a personalized routine… [providing] emotional support” and “empowerment … to be the best mom to your baby.” In contrast, an abortion doula, according to Planned Parenthood, is “trained to offer physical, mental, [and] emotional support before, during, and after an abortion… to a pregnant person…. to help ease any pain, anxiety, or discomfort.” An academic study published by PubMed on the value of abortion doulas concluded that this support was significant. “In a setting that does not allow family or friends to be present during the abortion procedure, women highly valued the presence of trained abortion doulas... providing support to women during abortion care.”
One might expect that such care would be extremely important when aborting one’s child with drugs alone at home. In fact, as indicated above in North Carolina, there is a large covert network of underground abortion doulas operating in states that otherwise have laws to protect women in abortion. The Washington Post recently ran a piece on the covert network that provides pills for thousands of abortions in the U.S. This emerging underground abortion network provides drugs to mothers as far along as 15 weeks – over 4 months into the pregnancy. “The distributor refers the later-term cases to an abortion doula she’s known for years, who counsels them over text about exactly what they will see when they pass the pregnancy. A 12-week fetus is roughly the size of a plum; a 15-week fetus, the size of an apple. These cases, in particular, present significant legal risk to the patient, who has to figure out how to surreptitiously dispose of the remains. The abortion doula said she often sends a small amount of acid so the client can dissolve some of the fetus, and bury whatever is left.” Disposing of the remains of one’s aborted child is not something most women taking abortion pills count on, particularly when the child by-product is too large to flush away.
“‘I try to emotionally prepare them and say, ‘It’s going to look like a baby,’ the doula says’.”
That is because it is a baby.
The concept of an abortion doula, while
comforting women in the termination of the life of their own child, might also be
pulling the thread on the tapestry of deception that the abortion industry has
woven into American culture. The combination of abortion pills, an abortion
doula, and the abortion ordeal makes the termination of the life of one’s baby
more perceptible and real than ever. And injured women are going to appear. The
whole concept just might undo decades of abortion euphemisms. Or it could provide
an entirely new acceptance for a parent killing her own child, even in the face
of extreme health risks.
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