Abortion Pills Are Unstoppable
by Erin Matson
Abortion can’t be stopped. That’s why the anti-abortion movement is so afraid of abortion pills.
Abortion — and abortion pills — are unstoppable. Abortion pills are safe, effective, and give us the power to determine what our own future will look like. Following the disastrous Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, more people than ever are using abortion pills to end unwanted pregnancies. In fact, the majority of abortions in the United States now take place through pills.
And, no matter what happens to abortion pills under the law — and believe me, anti-abortion leaders and groups are desperate to try something, anything in their quest to ban all abortions — abortion pills are not going away. It’s simply impossible to search through every medication cabinet in America. People will keep taking these pills.
That’s why the anti-abortion movement is so afraid of abortion pills and wants to stop people from accessing them.
I attended the rally in front of the Supreme Court the day the court heard oral arguments in The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA in March. The anti-abortion protesters and speakers, who were smaller in number than anything I’ve seen in fifteen years of demonstrating outside the Supreme Court, made false claims that abortion pills are dangerous and false, bad-faith statements that they’re in this to protect women’s health. With the Big ‘Pro-Life’ sexist, regressive attitudes, trust me when I say that concern for women’s well-being is the lowest on their actual agenda, which is to ban and criminalize all abortion.
Numerous studies and almost 25 years of real-world use around the world overwhelmingly show that abortion pills are safe, with 0.3 percent of people who take them experiencing serious complications — a statistically insignificant rate. Abortion pills are a valuable tool for protecting the physical and mental health of people with capacity for pregnancy. Pregnancy and childbirth are 14 times more likely to cause dangerous complications than an abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol, to say nothing of the long-term toll carrying an unwanted pregnancy can take on a person’s well-being.
Anti-abortion leaders and groups want power over our bodies and lives, and to control our decisions. We know better. We know each individual is the best person to decide what’s best for their body, their life, and their future.
Desperate for any angle they can invent, some anti-abortion leaders have been concern-trolling about abortion pills as if somehow they were now environmentalists, falsely arguing that chemicals from the pills contaminate wastewater.
This is simply not true. Part of the FDA’s rigorous approval process for new medications is assessing environmental impact. During the approval process for mifepristone, the FDA determined that it didn’t pose an environmental risk.
Anti-abortion leaders’ attacks on abortion rights aren’t popular or changing minds, so they’re turning to fearmongering. Most Americans want to keep abortion pills accessible and want lawmakers to stay out of reproductive health decisions, according to a March 2024 Axios poll.
Abortion pills are becoming more popular. As of 2023, more than 60 percent of abortions in the United States were medication abortions, which doesn’t even account for any self-managed abortions with pills, which have likely skyrocketed as well.
The anti-abortion movement is losing the battle for hearts and minds. But we can’t be complacent. They won’t stop, so neither can we. And as for abortion pills themselves? It’s clear they are unstoppable.
