CV NEWS FEED // A recent article published by Slate under the headline “Dobbs was Always Just the Beginning” argues that it would be “lawless” for U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to rule that the proliferation of chemical abortions is unconstitutional.
The Slate authors, Mark Joseph Stern and Dahlia Lithwick, who has written previously on hot button cultural topics, use several falsehoods to back up their claim. Here are the standouts.
What Slate says: “Medication abortions are 18 times safer than childbirth, very reliable, and easy to access.”
The reality: The assertion that chemical abortion is “safer than birth” is common in pro-abortion media. However, it is very difficult to prove.
Between 2000 and 2019, the FDA accumulated 6,158 pages of adverse event reports from women who had chemical abortions induced with the drug mifepristone.
Women who took the drug while having unknown ectopic pregnancies were at particular risk for severe complications or death, according to the data. In these cases, a woman was 30% more likely to die than if she had not obtained an abortion at all.
While 20 deaths were reported by the FDA, and an additional 529 cases were described as “life threatening,” the peer-reviewed Issues in Law and Medicine journal (ILM) cautioned that “the FDA AER system is inadequate and significantly underestimates the adverse events from mifepristone.”
After analyzing the FDA report, the ILM concluded that “significant morbidity and mortality have occurred following the use of mifepristone as an abortifacient.”
Two other studies, one conducted in California and one in Finland, demonstrated that a woman has four times the risk of developing complications from a chemical abortion compared to a surgical abortion. It has also been found that much data documenting adverse reactions from chemical abortions is incomplete and missing. This is reportedly due to a tendency among abortion providers to instruct their clients to hide their use of abortion drugs from doctors.
>> Want to know more about maternal mortality rates? WATCH this EDIFY video: The Truth about Women’s Healthcare
What Slate says: “Since his confirmation, [Judge Kacsmaryk] has gained a reputation as perhaps the most lawless jurist in the country.”
The reality: So, who is Judge Kacsmaryk and what exactly is his legal philosophy?
A specialist in religious freedom law, he graduated with honors from Abilene Christian University and the University of Texas School of Law before landing a job with one of the top law firms in Texas. Throughout his legal career, he has defended clients of all faiths.
Like Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Kacsmaryk holds a textualist and originalist view of the Constitution. Judge Kacsmaryk’s nomination to the federal bench in 2017 was supported by a wide range of lawyers and law professors.
What Slate says: “After more than twenty years on the U.S. market, mifepristone has become one of the most studied drugs available and has proven to have an impeccable safety profile—many times safer than common drugs like penicillin or Viagra.”
The reality: In October 2022, the FDA warned that mail-order abortion drugs like mifepristone can result in serious side effects for women. A spokesperson from the Biden administration cautioned against prescribing the drug as birth control, a practice that has become widespread in the months following the Supreme Court’s decision in the case of Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health.
A 16-year medical journal study tracked the rates at which women were admitted to the emergency room following both surgical abortions and chemical abortions, which were induced with mifepristone. The researchers found that “chemical abortion is consistently and progressively associated with more postabortion ER visit morbidity than surgical abortion.” They also noticed an alarming increase in women that were admitted following chemically-induced abortions, but were falsely misreported as instead having miscarriages.
The drug is especially deadly to women who have an ectopic pregnancy. Readers can find some of the devastating stories of women harmed by chemical abortions using mifepristone here.
