President Biden is Wrong: Abortion Pills Lead to Significantly Higher Rate of ER Visits

Biden Administration Continues ‘See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Report No Data on Evil’ Mindset While Ignoring Science

Washington, D.C. – President Joe Biden incorrectly claimed today that the abortion pill is safe and announced his Administration would work to increase access to the abortion pill, which real-world science demonstrates will only put more women and girls at risk.

Speaking from the White House following the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, President Biden referenced a letter from the pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists while stating that common-sense limitations on abortion pills were “not based on evidence.”

However, comprehensive data from a massive Medicaid dataset shows that the rate of abortion pill-related emergency room visits increased over 500% from 2002 through 2015.

Key findings of the peer-reviewed research include:

• The abortion pill significantly increased the risk of an emergency room visit. Within 30 days of a chemical abortion, when compared to rates following a surgical abortion:
  • 22% greater risk of ER visit for any reason.
  • 53% greater risk of ER visit for an abortion-related reason.
• The abortion pill makes subsequent abortions more dangerous:
  • Women who had a chemical abortion followed by a second abortion of any type within the next 12 months were more than twice as likely to wind up in the emergency room.

The groundbreaking study, published in November 2021 in the international peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology, was the first research to utilize Medicaid claims data to conduct a 17-year longitudinal analysis of 423,000 confirmed abortions and 121,283 confirmed subsequent visits to an emergency room within 30 days of the abortion.  In contrast, common pro-abortion studies are frequently based on small surveys of fewer than one thousand women.

An additional analysis of the Medicaid database found that if a woman’s abortion pill-related complications are miscoded by emergency room personnel as a natural miscarriage, she is:

• Twice as likely to be admitted for surgery for retained products of conception.
• At significantly greater risk of multiple hospital admissions for treatment of complications.

Dr. James Studnicki, vice president of data analytics at Charlotte Lozier Institute and lead author of both studies, explained:

“The safety of the abortion pill is greatly exaggerated, helped along by the FDA’s 2016 decision to only require reports of abortion pill-related deaths, which skews their data.  Hemorrhage? Need for follow-up surgery?  Infection?  Near-death experience?  No need to tell the FDA, which then allows President Biden to claim the pills are safe.

“In reality, the increasing dominance of the abortion pill and its disproportionate contribution to emergency room morbidity is a serious public health threat, and the real-world data suggests the threat is growing.”

Chuck Donovan, president of Charlotte Lozier Institute, said:

“President Biden and his Administration are operating with a ‘see no evil, hear no evil, report no data on evil’ mindset, ignoring peer-reviewed science and even the data they could easily obtain from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.  Diluted data is not good science, and unsuspecting women and young girls will pay the price for President Biden’s politically motivated decision to ignore the science.”

Charlotte Lozier Institute was launched in 2011 as the education and research arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. CLI is a hub for research and public policy analysis on some of the most pressing issues facing the United States and nations around the world. The Institute is named for a feminist physician known for her commitment to the sanctity of human life and equal career and educational opportunities for women.

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