How often have you heard, or even used, the argument that abortion should remain legal because, otherwise, women would resort to dangerous back-alley abortions? This is the so-called clothes-hanger argument, a reference to the crude and unsafe method of abortion that obviously exposes women to sepsis, hemorrhage, infection, and worse.

Now, pro-lifers, like me, primarily oppose all abortion on simple moral grounds. It’s wrong to intentionally kill an innocent human being. Secondarily, we argue that abortion is harmful to women.

You defend legal abortion primarily as a matter of absolute freedom to make “intimate and personal choices” that are “central to personal dignity and autonomy.” In your view, it’s morally wrong for me to impose my views on others. Secondarily, you defend legal abortion, as in the clothes-hanger argument, as necessary to protect the health of women in a pregnancy-related crisis.

You also disbelieve our claim to genuinely care about women in pregnancy distress. I say that the proof is there, and fair-minded people see it. Over the last 50 years, pro-lifers opened at their own expense, not demanding taxpayer dollars, nearly 3,000 pregnancy help offices and clinics across the U.S. -- and dedicated their time to help, free of charge, one woman at a time find life-affirming solutions to her pregnancy-related crisis.

In turn, I admit that I think your clothes-hanger argument is a ruse. How else to explain why there is no outcry from you against the chemical abortion method commonly called the abortion pill? It’s leaving one out of every ten women who use it with sepsis, hemorrhage, infection, and worse. It’s the clothes-hanger in chemical form.

That the abortion pill harms women is the conclusion of the data analysis by Jamie Bryan Hall and Ryan Anderson at EPPC. In summary, “This largest-known study of the abortion pill is based on analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database that includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023.” The data shows that “10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.” This is more than 20 times higher than the 0.5% figure established by the FDA.

But where is your demand that this damaging abortion method, like the clothes-hanger, be stopped in the name of health care for women? Why are abortion advocates, instead of demanding the FDA review this data and warn women of the dangers, pushing for less oversight in the prescription and use of the abortion pill? For example, New York, Maine, Vermont, Washington, and Colorado recently passed laws allowing prescribers to remain anonymous by removing their names from prescriptions for the abortion pill. This makes it impossible for a woman who suffers injury to sue for malpractice when doctors fail to inform women of the risks or provide medical supervision.

It gets worse. The most common abortion pill regimen involves taking two pills: mifepristone (Mifeprex) and misoprostol (Cytotec). The first pill, mifepristone, kills the preborn by blocking progesterone, a hormone that occurs naturally in women and that is needed to support pregnancy. The second pill, misoprostol, causes cramping and bleeding to expel the dead child. According to the FDA, mifepristone is to be used only through 70 days (10 weeks) of gestational age.

In Cuba, one of the countries where my organization, PassionLife, works with doctors to open pregnancy help clinics, we recently discovered that doctors are giving pregnant women only the second pill (misoprostol) to kick-start cramping and expulsion. They also dispense them far past 10 weeks. These women must swallow large doses of misoprostol so that babies in their second trimester can be expelled. This is as brutal and dangerous as any clothes-hanger.

Even media friends, such as the NY Times, openly speak out against using misoprostol without first taking mifepristone, as it “could increase health risks and physical discomfort for women” and “the need for physician intervention.”

I don’t believe you care about protecting women from harmful abortion methods, as suggested by the clothes-hanger. But I am ready to be proven wrong. I will even apologize if, as clear-eyed cobelligerents in the culture war, you join hands with us on this one thing -- demand that the FDA do its job and “investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women and based on objective safety criteria, reconsider its approval altogether.”

John Ensor has been a leader in the pro-life movement for over 35 years as a speaker, author, mentor and co-laborer. John serves as the President of PassionLife, where he concentrates on training communities of churches in countries with high abortion rates, set up pregnancy crisis intervention services. He has been recognized in the Legacy of Life book as one of the fifty greatest pro-life leaders of the last 50 years.

Image: PassionLife