The acting CEO of Planned Parenthood said last week in an interview that the “silver lining” of the coronavirus pandemic is that her abortion chain has used telehealth technology to provide drug-induced, at-home abortions.
Alexis McGill Johnson told Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman the fact that many states have attempted to include elective abortions among other procedures that should be temporarily banned to preserve scarce medical equipment for healthcare workers treating coronavirus patients is “unconscionable.”
Johnson said the “silver lining” of the pandemic has been the launch of Planned Parenthood’s new tele-abortion service in which women seeking an abortion have a virtual meeting with an abortion provider and obtain a prescription for abortion-inducing drugs they take at home.
“It is actually a silver lining in this pandemic, that Planned Parenthood and many other health providers have actually been able to really lean into telehealth infrastructure and provide service,” she said:
Thanks for having me @democracynow. Women and people of color are bearing the heaviest burden of fighting #COVID19 — as workers on the frontlines and as caretakers at home. Our bodies are deemed essential, but our right to control them is not. https://t.co/iqH5R36z5g
— Alexis McGill Johnson (@alexismcgill) April 28, 2020
Planned Parenthood has been touting an increase in at-home abortions since its tele-abortion services began nationwide, though many pro-life advocates have concerns about the practice.
Specifically, mifepristone, one of the drugs used in a medication abortion, is not approved under the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS), but women are obtaining it illegally from overseas.
On Monday, national pro-life leaders sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, urging him to take action to block the illegal Internet sale of abortion-inducing drugs that are produced overseas and then shipped to the United States.
In a press release, the leaders observed that, under REMS, the drug “cannot legally be sold in pharmacies or online due to the risk of serious complications.”
However, websites such as AidAccess and Rablon sell and distribute the drugs regularly.
“This is a medication that definitely has dangers associated with it,” Dr. Christina Francis, an Indiana-based OB/GYN and chairman of the board of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly recently.
Francis said some immediate complications of mifepristone could be:
hemorrhage, the immediate possibility of infection, and the possibility of failure, where the pregnancy doesn’t fully pass from the medication and then leading to sometimes the requirement for emergent surgery for that woman because of either ongoing bleeding or the risk of infection.
Francis added that because of the uncertainties associated with the pandemic, many women “are being influenced by fear right now, and this is being perpetuated by the abortion industry.”
One Planned Parenthood official in New York State touted that the organization’s new tele-abortion service is so much in demand that one mother began her drug-induced abortion “at home with her children running around behind her.”
Dr. Meera Shah, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, told the Associated Press (AP), “We provided a medication abortion to an EMT while she was sitting in her ambulance. We provided abortion care to a mother who was at home with her children running around behind her.”
Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explained in his videos about various abortion procedures that mifepristone blocks the action of progesterone, which the mother’s body produces to nourish the pregnancy. When progesterone is blocked, the lining of the mother’s uterus deteriorates, and blood and nourishment are cut off to the developing baby, who then dies inside the mother’s womb.
The drug misoprostol (also called Cytotec) then causes contractions and bleeding to expel the baby from the mother’s uterus.
As Catholic News Agency reported, Gynuity Health Products, a New York-based company that has been sponsoring tele-abortion technology, tweeted recently, “The ability to get abortion medications from a health care provider by mail is particularly crucial in the COVID-19 crisis”:
As featured in today’s NY Times, #TelAbortion medical abortion (https://t.co/MSQJymXCmL) is safe & effective. The ability to get abortion medications from a health care provider by mail is particularly crucial in the COVID-19 crisis. https://t.co/XJBBdyAqjl
— Gynuity Health Projects (@Gynuity) April 28, 2020
In his Washington Update column Monday, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wrote that Planned Parenthood’s Johnson referring to more tele-abortions as a “silver lining” of the coronavirus means “more deaths – more innocent, unborn, child fatalities made possible by their money-hungry network.”
With Planned Parenthood’s tele-abortion expansion to all 50 states, Perkins said, more women will have at-home “chemically-induced procedures that carry significant risks”:
They tell women that it’ll be simple, natural, safe, and private process. They’ll recover in a day, maybe two. What they don’t tell them is that they might deliver a tiny, perfectly-formed child. Or that they’ll experience labor pains, heavy bleeding, vomiting, or lose consciousness. They don’t talk about the depression, anger, anxiety, panic attacks, and substance abuse that follow. Or the weeks to months of recovery time, usually managed alone.
“This is Planned Parenthood’s ‘silver lining,’” Perkins concluded. “Babies who don’t have a chance at life, women who are haunted and harmed.”
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