Months after a Tennessee pregnancy center employee sounded the alarm on a sketchy package of abortion pills received by a client, the underhanded distribution of these pills continues. Three more dodgy packages of pills have come to the same clinic in clients’ possession. Life Choices of Memphis clinic is determined to make this negligence known, and they want more centers to join the fight to expose unsafe and often illicit mail-order abortion pills.
Late last year Rachel Davis, director of Community Relations for Life Choices, went online with a video, “Mail Order Abortion is not healthcare,” shortly after a client called to request information on reversing her chemical abortion after taking one of the pills.
“She brought the pill packet to us to show us what she had taken,” Davis said, describing the pills as unmarked, lacking tamper-resistant packaging, with no evidence of a medical provider prescribing the medication nor a pharmacy distributor. The postmark and return address did not match up, either, even though they were both from California.
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In August of this year a different client brought pills mailed to her from Massachusetts days after Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey signed a radical abortion bill further cementing the commonwealth’s status as an abortion state, an example of how chemical abortion pill sellers circumvent state laws to get the drugs into buyers’ hands.
“These pills were sent from a death state to a life state,” Davis said.
Davis responded with a follow-up video while she was in Washington, D.C. as part of a panel discussion with Members of Congress organized Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America regarding the abortion pill. She recorded the video on her down time during the visit. This time, Fox News picked up the recording and aired a news story about it.
In the video, Davis shares the story about the first incident from California. She then shared the more recent abortion pill mailing from the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project (MAP). Davis chose not to bring those pills with her to Washington but instead brought the packaging.
“It is not safe for me to travel with medication that does not belong to me, does not have my name on it, and does not have instructions on it or anything like that,” she explained in the video.
Davis instead held up the rest of the contents of the package which included an ectopic pregnancy information sheet.
“Which I found ironic because the woman who got this in the mail did not speak to a doctor, did not have to present a pregnancy test and did not have an ultrasound before coming to our pregnancy resource center,” she said.
Davis went on to read the symptoms of an ectopic pregnancy on the card, which she noted is also like symptoms while taking the abortion pill: cramping and bleeding.
Davis also held up a business card from the packaging that was meant to help the buyer of the pills find a “reproductive lawyer.”
“Why do you need a reproductive lawyer if everything in this package is on the up and up and true, valid, and legal healthcare?” she asked.
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The packaging included a card for WhatsApp, the platform by which the client ordered the medication.
Davis read aloud from the card, which called WhatsApp, “your trusted digital companion for sexual and reproductive healthcare.”
Davis called out the MAP abortion group which had a note in the package suggesting that abortion pill customers “shred any papers” from the MAP and “clear any browsers” that shows the correspondence between the customer and the MAP.
Davis told Pregnancy Help News that the message of the instructions telling clients to shred all information equates to a client believing, “if someone catches me, I am in trouble.” A client will then assume the card for the “reproductive lawyer” is a way to ensure she is "protecting herself,” said Davis.
Davis also told Pregnancy Help News the MAP abortion group included a handwritten note that said, “Best Wishes. Love, the MAP.”
While Davis was in D.C., she received a text from a staffer saying that a third client brought pills to the center. This client did not take any of the pills, she said.
A fourth incident occurred just before Davis spoke to Pregnancy Help News.
This most recent young woman had purchased the pills online in May when she was eight to 10 weeks pregnant.
“Now she is closing in on her third trimester,” Davis said.
The center’s nurse explained the dangers of attempting a chemical abortion to the client at her stage of pregnancy, information recipients of mail-order abortion drugs would otherwise not have access to.
Davis said it is likely that many centers are seeing these pills in their offices.
She said the center staff will ask potentially abortion-minded clients whether they have ordered the pills and at times the client may pull the package and/or pills from her purse.
The center educates clients on gestation, ectopic pregnancy, and RH testing.
“We make sure we have the most pointed and strategic conversation while she is still in front of us,” said Davis. “When we educate them, they trust us.”
Along with stressing the importance of educating clients who bring mail-order abortion pills to a center to best ensure their safety, she recommends documenting and reporting any similar instances to authorities when possible.
What does Davis hope to accomplish as the word gets out about the negligence in abortion pill providers?
“If it is happening in our center, it is happening in other centers,” she said. “We don’t want this to be about Life Choices speaking on behalf of all pregnancy centers. I want all pregnancy centers to take their pills to their legislators.”
If a center is apprehensive about going to their state capitals with these concerns Davis said, find another person in authority who is passionate about this.
“There has to be someone who supports your center who can tap into it,” she said.
While the FDA is evaluating the safety of mifepristone, Davis said she hopes it leads to an even deeper investigation “across the board,” especially now that there has been “traces of the pill in our water.”
At the conclusion of Davis’s most recent video, she mentions the significance of getting the federal government to crack down on these dubious abortion pill outlets.
“We would love to see our federal administration and of our state governments take action, enforce the laws we already have on the books that would make this illegal,” she said.
“When something like this is happening, this is an epidemic,” she said. It’s at levels no one knew existed. And now we have proof.”
