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| photo credit: Hush Naidoo / Unsplash |
The largest reason that abortion pill complications may be underreported is that abortion clinics often aren't involved in the aftermath of those complications. The study found that over 60% of surgeries initiated due to abortion pill complications were handled by a different medical facility than the one that provided pills to the patient. If the abortion clinic is never made aware of a complication, it will not report it.
Live Action News has reported instances in which the abortion industry has told women to say that medical problems stem from miscarriage rather than the abortion pill if they have to go to the emergency room. This would further limit the number of reports that the FDA receives showing the dangers of mifepristone.
The study's authors wrote,
“Many of the AEs [adverse events] experienced by women were unknown to the abortion provider until the follow-up examination, which is troubling considering the poor follow-up rate and elimination of the requirement for an in-office follow up visit. Some of the patient deaths were not known to the abortion provider until they saw the death in an obituary or were contacted by an outside source.”
Other studies indicate that between 5% and 8% of women seek follow-up care at an urgent care clinic or the emergency room. This would suggest that thousands of women require medical attention after taking mifepristone every year.
"Five to eight percent is no small number and may represent anywhere from 17,000 to 27,000 possible emergency or urgent care visits in one year, based off the most recent data (2017) showing 339,640 medication abortions were committed nationally out of 862,320 total abortions reported."
The study goes on to say that the quality of reports received by the FDA varies drastically. Researchers said that many of them "didn’t even have enough information to tell the FDA or anyone else what actually happened to the woman."
