WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Strength and Dignity: Abortion Pill Access Increases and Many Women are Celebrating

Episode Date: March 17, 2024

In this episode, Michaela engages with an article that credits Dobbs and COVID-19 for the increase in abortion pill access. She counters the cultural celebration of death and encourages men and women to stay engaged in the conversation and make their abhorrence known.

And welcome to Strength and Dignity. This is Michaela Estreth, and you are listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. Welcome back to Strength and Dignity. On today's episode, I am returning to Ms. Magazine, and we're going to be talking only about one article that was published just a few days ago on October 26. It's titled, There's been a major increase in abortion pill access, thanks to COVID-19 and Dobbs. This article is by Carrie N. Baker, and

it's under the section Health, Justice, and Law, and National News. So when I saw the headline of this article, I was a little bit not taken aback, but it just, it sounded rather ironic. There's been a major increase in abortion pill access. It reads, I've known that. I feel like

our culture has been talking about it, especially the pro-life movement. We're well aware. But then the credit that this article gives in the headline says, thanks to COVID-19 and Dobbs. And it gets really, really interesting because, well, first of all, Dobbs overturned Roe versus Wade, and those on the pro-abortion movement were extremely upset with Dobbs, but now they're crediting it for something that they would say was a success or a good thing in the abortion

industry. And then they also credit COVID-19, which is really, really interesting because I'm going to recall some conversations that were ongoing during the pandemic and now see how this credit of COVID-19 actually affirms those conversations. So let's just start with the article. I'm going to quote a lot from this article. So beginning, the author, Carrie and Baker, she says, over the last several years, in anticipation of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, and in response to the COVID pandemic,

activists developed interstate telemedicine abortion services and community support networks that are now providing abortion pills to people living in all 50 states, including states with bans. As a result, abortion pills are now more accessible and affordable than ever before. So this is literally how her article opens. And I remember an ongoing conversation during the pandemic of, well, if people are in need of medical services, but it's not an emergency and they're not going into the doctor, how can they still have that provided. And so telemedicine was already around before COVID-19. It wasn't like in

2020, all of a sudden the idea of having a conversation with your doctor over Zoom was a new thing. That's not true. But telemedicine appointments really surge during COVID and 2020 because people were simply isolating and didn't want to go out. Lots of pro-life activists were saying during that time, this is going to support the abortion industry. It's going to, they're going to use COVID as an excuse for, well, these people need abortion access or they need access to these pills. And they can't meet us in person because of the pandemic going on. So we should be able to prescribe medicine over telemedicine or over the phone, over Zoom, or simply just like putting in a prescription instead of the original. requirement that they had to have a face-to-face meeting with a young woman if she was requesting

abortion medication. And that all went out the window with COVID-19. So continuing on in the article, Baker briefly describes the process of medical abortion through the taking of two medications that would be prescribed to young women if they were going to do an at-home abortion. and I'm quoting this just to express the language of such a heartbreaking concept that is written about without any emotion and just from a completely medical scientific stance without recognizing the tragedy of what is actually going on. So she says two medications are used for early abortion, Miphypritone, which blocks the effects of the pregnancy-sustin, Misoprotazole, a commonly used ulcer medication that causes contractions to expel pregnancy tissue. Used in combination, these medications are 98% effective in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and safer than Tylenol. So digging into this quote, about a year ago, I released an episode on Mithepritzone because Mithepritzone was in the news.

I believe there was a debate ongoing in Texas about the legalization of Mithephepritzone or the illegalization of, it and whether it should be used in the abortion process. And here she, the author rightly states what the drug does, which is it blocks the effects of the pregnancy-sustaining hormone progesterine. So we have estrogen and progesterine. But what that actually does if you were to go into further detail is it basically starves the growing child inside the mother. So it cuts off the production of progesterine, which creates, feeds the placenta and

the placenta is what supports the life of the child. So first the child is essentially starved and then a commonly used ulcer medication causes contractions to expel pregnancy tissue. I think that is one of the hardest parts about the way that this is written for me is calling a child a new baby pregnancy tissue, which as we know in the abortion debate is so common. It's to remove the humanity from it, to remove the recognition of life in the womb, and simply call it tissue. Call that, that little boy or that little girl tissue, which is just so inhumane.

It's painful to even think about. I mean, we might as well call one another walking around on the street, just like blobs of cells, because that's exactly what. the abortion industry is doing and calling a new little baby pregnancy tissue. And then another just outrageous comparison is that the abortion process or the medical abortion is safer than Tylenol is what Carrie Baker says. And she cites it. And so I went to the site and it's true.

It says that this is about 95% successful and safer than some medicines such as Tylenol. And yet again, just the complete twist of this topic comparing literally the murder of a child to the safety of Tylenol, a drug that is supposed to relieve pain, to stop swelling, to reduce a fever, very minor life conditions, to a drug that is starving a child and forcing him from him or her from his home. is being compared to a pain reliever. But let's get into her credit of COVID and why she says this. So she explains that before COVID, young women had to see a physician in person in order to get a prescription, and she said that the drugs were much more expensive. So during COVID, the FDA challenged these restrictions in court and said abortion should be able to be accessed through telemedicine and through male, which is really, really,

key because that means that these pills can be shipped to the person's home instead of you have to go in and buy it at an abortion industry. It wasn't even over the counter at the time. But now they can be shipped to your house. You don't even have to leave your home. It's like getting an Amazon delivery. It just, oh my goodness. It just is, it's so mortifying and just tragic. So that's her explanation of how COVID made this advancement in medical abortion through telemedicine because everyone was in their homes and so they had to figure out a way to get these pills to young women who couldn't go in to see a doctor.

But then she credits Dobbs, which like I said at the beginning, is really interesting because Dobbs was what a lot of people responded to Dobbs as restrictive, as putting down the abortion movement, as a step back in the abortion movement, but she's saying that Dobbs actually helped advance certain parts of the abortion movement. She says, after Dobbs, several states passed telemedicine abortion provider shield laws that allowed clinicians licensed in those states to provide telemedicine abortion to people living in any state. With these new protections, telemedicine abortion providers began serving patients in states with abortion bans.

So now, not only is telemedicine helping those who can't leave their home, but it's also helping women across the country, like in other states who have restrictions against telemedicine abortion pills. So someone living in a state that doesn't allow abortion or at least doesn't allow medication to be prescribed through telemedicine can simply see a physician in a neighboring state or even across the country. in that state because that state allows telemedicine abortion prescriptions and then be shipped them again to their house. It doesn't matter that their state, their particular state doesn't allow it. The reason that Baker is crediting Dobbs for this is because Dobbs removed the abortion question from a federal level and returned it to a state level, which was a victory for the pro-life movement because it didn't. abortion was no longer legal in the United States as declared by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the decision to the states.

But that decision now is being maneuvered so that anyone can still get an abortion just by obeying the state law of states that allow abortion versus following the state law in their state, which doesn't. doesn't allow abortion. So Baker continues. One interstate telemedicine abortion clinic, Aid Access, recently reported they are mailing abortion pills to 5,500 people living in states with abortion bans each month, whereas before COVID-19, patients had to travel hundreds of miles to brick-and-water clinics, walk in a gauntlet of protesters, and pay an average $560 for medication abortion. Now, they can obtain these pills from the privacy of their own.

homes for a sliding scale fee of up to $150 in all 50 states. So now, thanks to Dobbs and COVID-19, anyone can access abortion pills by simply requesting that they are mailed to their home and for an extreme lesser fee than before. But she also, I was laughing when I was reading this because she is completely playing the victim card in this quote where she's saying that women have to. travel hundreds of miles to brick and mortar clinics. The way that she quotes that is as if we were living in like the 1800s before COVID-19. Because, you know, we had to actually walk into a brick and mortar clinic, which is saying a building.

Like we had to go into a building to talk to someone face to face. Heaven forbid. That's just crazy. So not only is she just being extremely overdramatic by saying, that women had to go to brick and water clinics. But then she says, walk a gauntlet of protesters. So pick an average day and go to an abortion clinic. I don't think you're going to see a gauntlet of protesters.

You may see a few people, a few, praying outside of the abortion clinic. But that's not a gauntlet of protesters. So not only is this exaggerated journalism, but it's also just simply not true. It's, that is not the case of what was happening. And yet she's playing the victim card for these women, and that is a classic tendency of the feminist movement, especially second wave and now third wave feminism, is to play the victim card to say, pity me, my life is really hard, and that's why I need recompense for all of this, or I need to be treated better, or my rights aren't being justified or respected, and I need more rights, I need more freedom, because my life right now is really, really hard. Continuing on, she says, these seismic changes in abortion pill access have broken through decades of political and medical barriers that have limited access to abortion pills. The climate of fear and intimidation created by the anti-abortion movement led to over-regulation of the safe and easy-to-use medication and few clinicians willing to navigate these burdensome restrictions, which blocked increased access and drove up prices. Pathways for accessing abortion pills spurred by COVID-19 and Dobbs have finally freed Miffipritzone from the vice grip of these unjust political and medical barriers.

So picking out just a few quotes, she talks about safe and easy-to-use medications, which we have already gotten into with her comparison to Tylenol. But again, just completely missing the picture and not not truthfully talking about what abortion does. she also again is playing the victim card by talking about this vice grip and these unjust political and medical barriers but actually one thing she doesn't say is the fact that these restrictions or vice grip is in place for all drugs it's not just cracking down on the abortion drug it's the fact that there's a process to get a prescription that is from a doctor that is required. And so she's complaining about rules that are there,

regulations and rules that are there for the safety of the patients and the safety of the consumer, not just to restrict abortion access for women. And then she concludes the article saying, anti-abortion extremists are now trying once again to limit access to abortion pills in a lawsuit currently on appeal at the Supreme Court. But the cat is out of the bag.

even if they win this lawsuit, the robust alternative supply networks established in the wake of Dobbs will persist. The creative actions of reproductive health advocates in response to COVID-19 and Dobbs have ripped away decades of political and medical red tape and finally placed abortion pills directly in the hands of people who need them. This is how she ends her article. It's like a victory or a freedom. We finally made it. and it is a direct clear credit to COVID-19 and Dobbs. Two things that were being discussed at the time of these are going to be used against us.

COVID-19 and Dobbs, they're both going to be used to further the telemedicine abortion industry. And lots of people either didn't want to talk about it or said that that was too extreme, that we should be focusing on the pandemic and saving people's lives or with Dobbs, We should be celebrating this instead of realizing that the pro-abortion feminist movement was using this for their advantage. So now let's turn specifically to something that we can do and can be talking about, and that is state issues. And state issues that because that's where we are right now in our country is these issues are being decided at the state level. So one example, I'm going to pick on my home state of Ohio in this episode, and that's because an issue in our election coming up next week, November 8th, is that it's called issue one. And it's an actual change in our constitution that legalizes abortion at any stage and puts it in the Constitution.

So it can't be overturned by, except by an amendment to the Constitution. A lot of people say in argument against issue one, which means they are pro-life people who say we should vote no on issue one. They're saying that it will legalize abortion in Ohio up to the moment of birth. And these are the quotes from the actual issue of why they say that's the conclusion. In the issue, it says that it will grant a pregnant woman's treating physician the authority to determine on a case-by-case basis whether an unborn child is viable. So viability is something that was really discussed during the abortion movement early on. And it's when is a child able to survive outside the womb? That's what viability means because that's what medical professionals we're trying to say

is the moment that a child is a human instead of just a bunch of tissues or a bunch of cells. The child can survive outside the womb without depending on the mother to live inside of her. And so that's what viability is. And this says that a doctor can decide if a child is viable on a case-by-case basis, meaning there is no standard for viability. So even if you're 38, 39 weeks pregnant, they could say, well, actually this child can't survive outside the womb because, for example, he has a hole in his heart, or he has a collapse long, or something that can be medically fixed, but they're just going to make up an

excuse for why the child should just be disposed of. Or even like if the child has down syndrome or something that the parents decide they don't want the child, they can say, well, the child can't, isn't viable outside of the womb anyways. So we might as well just dispose of them. That's why it says, that's why people are saying that this means in the Ohio, if it's put in the Ohio constitution, that abortion is legal up to the moment of birth. And then a second quote is that this issue will quote, always allow an unborn child to be aborted at any stage of pregnancy, regardless of viability, if in the treating physician's determination, the abortion is necessary to protect the pregnant woman's life or health. So that, again, is such an extreme general statement that not only does

it completely underwrite viability, but it says if the woman, the woman is deemed to be in danger, her life is deemed to be in danger or her health is deemed to be in danger her health that's really really crucial because that means that they could say anything they it doesn't just have to be like a life a life or death situation it could be it could be something extremely small that quote is a detriment to her health that they therefore say that they can get rid of this child so they will make up countless of reasons why this was a legal case to get rid of the child because for the sake of the woman they needed to. Maybe they might even lump mental health under there, that the woman is just not able to

take care of a child. And so for her mental health, we decided that even though the child was 38 weeks in the womb, that we're going to just support him. So that is the issue. That's issue one in Ohio. And it's being voted in this fall election in November. And so the point of all of this is to say that while a. abortion has moved from the federal level to the state level,

it is extremely important that we as supporters of life are speaking up in our respective states and making sure that this, that abortion is stopped instead of continued, like Baker was celebrating in the Ms. Magazine article saying, even though it's moved from a federal level to a state level, that's actually really good. Thanks to Dopp and thanks to COVID. This issue needs to be talked about and it needs to. to be acted upon in our state issues. That's all I have for today.

Thanks for listening to Strength and Dignity. I'm Michaela Estruth, and you're listening to Radio Free Hillsdale 101.1.7 FM.