What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Is medication abortion unsafe, or is the secretive and prohibitive environment around abortion the real danger?
Currently nearly all abortions are banned in Texas, with the small and confusing exception for medical emergencies (read more about our work to clarify that exception in a different bill). As a result, many people in Texas are turning to abortion-inducing drugs, mailed in from out-of-state providers or reproductive rights organizations, for people to use here for “self-managed” abortions. SB 2880/HB 5510 would prohibit the manufacturing, distributing, or providing of abortion-inducing drugs in Texas, and impose civil liabilities for violations.
Why is this bill so important to anti-abortion groups and legislators?
As they view it, access to abortion-inducing drugs, or abortion pills, is a “loophole” in the current abortion ban that needs to be closed. Abortions under the supervision of a healthcare provider are only taking place in medical emergencies. All other abortions technically should have ceased when SB 8 went into effect in 2021.
But, as the bill’s opponents state, abortions don’t stop just because they are illegal. Abortions have always and will always happen. They claim that the only thing you can do is stop safe abortions.
Abortion pills are the last place that people in Texas can go to access safe abortion care if they are unable to leave the state. They cannot access those medications through instate providers – instead turning to online platforms that connect them with options for getting the pills shipped directly to them.
What are abortion pills?
Representative Donna Howard made a special trip to the HB 5510 committee hearing to question the author. She brought up the point that these medications have many uses, especially during miscarriage, and that limiting their access in abortion might also limit access to them in other situations.
Are abortion pills safe?
Many witnesses gave testimony of their experiences treating patients at crisis pregnancy centers across the state who come in with complications after taking abortion pills at home. They described situations where women exhibited excessive bleeding, had ectopic pregnancies, or were too far along in their pregnancies for the abortion pills to be fully effective.
Their testimonies highlighted a real issue - ACOG suggests that abortion pills be taken under the care of a physician, after a consultation to determine if a medication abortion is the right decision for you. After taking the medications, you are encouraged to come back into a physician's office to make sure you are no longer pregnant, that you are not experiencing any adverse complications like severe bleeding, or that you are not in danger of developing an infection.
However, as people are ordering these medications from out of state and are not seeing a physician to determine if this is the right method for them, adverse complications are not being ruled out before, nor are patients being closely monitored after.
The hearing opened an important discussion in the narrative around medication abortion: is the medication abortion itself unsafe, or is the secretive and prohibitive environment that we've created around abortion in the state of Texas the real danger?