Supreme Court must hear from abortion pill victims: ‘I saw blood everywhere. I saw parts of my baby’

When the cramps became unbearable, she made her way to the bathroom. Dora said she "experienced the most severe pain" she had ever felt. "I sat on the toilet and bent over in pain. ... I grabbed a towel to bite on, in order to keep from screaming and was nearly passing out. As I got up, I saw blood everywhere. I saw parts of my baby, an image I will never be able to erase from my mind." 
 
This is one woman’s heartbreaking story of taking chemical abortion drugs, but tragically, her experience isn’t uncommon. Thousands of women face severe, even life-threatening, physical harm because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration arbitrarily removed commonsense, critical safeguards for women using abortion drugs. 
 
These unlawful actions will be brought before the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, March 26. 

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In this case, Alliance Defending Freedom represents doctors, medical associations and their members who are regularly called upon to care for women suffering from abortion-drug complications. Our lawsuit has gone all the way to the high court, where we will soon have the opportunity to ask it to restore the safeguards that the FDA recklessly removed. 

The Supreme Court is going to hear the suit against the FDA over abortion pills. FILE: Mifepristone (Mifeprex) and Misoprostol, the two drugs used in a medication abortion. (ROBYN BECK/AFP via Getty Images)

When the FDA first approved abortion drugs, it required doctors to see women in person before they take the drugs to check for dangerous conditions like an ectopic pregnancy, and then after taking the drugs to check for serious complications including severe bleeding and infections.  

But in 2016 and 2021, the federal agency tasked with ensuring the safety of drugs recklessly decided women no longer needed to see a doctor in person before, or after, taking these high-risk drugs. 
 
Shockingly, the FDA made this decision to remove in-person doctor visits and other protections for women’s health based on studies it conceded were "not adequate" and without ever studying the safety of the drugs with all the safeguards removed. 
 
Make no mistake, these abortion drugs are high-risk. They even come with a "black box" warning cautioning about "[s]erious and sometimes fatal infections and bleeding." The FDA’s own label for abortion drugs says that roughly one in 25 women will end up in the emergency room. 

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Emergency room doctors, OB-GYN hospitalists and on-call OB-GYNs — like the ones ADF is representing in this suit against the federal government — are witnessing the harms the FDA has caused, working to care for the many women facing crises because of the agency’s shameful actions. These doctors are a woman’s last line of defense because her first line of defense, the FDA, failed to do its job. 
 
By removing the doctor and ongoing care for the use of high-risk drugs, the FDA’s recklessness abandoned women and left them in isolation — to self-administer abortions at home or in a dorm room and suffer the possible serious complications alone. 
 
Just ask Patricia, who was told at a Planned Parenthood facility that a chemical abortion is nothing to worry about. Her experience was far different: "Within one hour I knew that everything the doctor had told me was a lie. I was bleeding so heavily, I believed I was dying…. I was in the worst physical pain of my life, worse than childbirth. The worst part of my experience was when I was sitting on the toilet and I felt myself pass a clot that felt strange. I looked into the toilet and saw my baby." 

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Leslie, who says her experience taking abortion drugs was nothing like what she was told it would be. There was more blood than she could have imagined and prolonged pain that "seemed to never let up." Seeing a doctor never crossed her mind because she was not given that option. She was all alone.

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Elizabeth recalls severe pain, heavy bleeding, and thinking she was going to die after taking abortion drugs. She felt "completely abandoned in the greatest moment of need." 
 
Indeed, the FDA has relegated women and young girls into isolation and pain, spinning lie after lie: "It’s like taking Tylenol." "It’s just like a heavy period." "There’s nothing to worry about; complications are rare." 
 
This feels wrong because it is wrong. 

Emergency room doctors, OB-GYN hospitalists and on-call OB-GYNs — like the ones ADF is representing in this suit against the federal government — are witnessing the harms the FDA has caused, working to care for the many women facing crises because of the agency’s shameful actions. These doctors are a woman’s last line of defense because her first line of defense, the FDA, failed to do its job. 

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That’s why we’re asking the Supreme Court to restore the crucial safeguards that once protected the women and girls who use these high-risk drugs. For Dora, Patricia, Leslie, Elizabeth and the countless other women who have suffered in silence — whose names we don’t know and whose stories we haven’t heard. 
 
The FDA betrayed women when it removed the necessary in-person doctor visits that protected their health and well-being — a wrong we are urging the Supreme Court to make right. 

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