Abortion is, of course, a prominent part of the 2024 election cycle. The fights over policy and politics have already begun to consume the news, and long ago began to consume the pro-life movement.
But the presidential election is far from the most important frontier in the fight for preborn lives. The battle over the rise and regulation of chemical abortion is where we must set our eyes. It’s where lives are most at stake.
The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case that could dramatically limit the accessibility of mail-order abortions — or at the very least, determine the legal framework for years of regulation.
This is monumental because chemical abortions like those obtained via mail constitute the majority of all abortions performed in America today, and the number of women obtaining the pills for use now — or later — is climbing quickly.
An MSNBC contributor urged women to “stockpile” the pills in light of the upcoming election, noting that over 50,000 “advance provision” requests have come through international telehealth abortion peddler Aid Access in just two years. That’s 50,000 chemical abortions shipped discreetly to women in the mail, for use at their discretion without any medical oversight, vetting, preparation or support.
This is a key part of the world we face after Roe: The rise of clandestine, unsupported abortions. Carried out by young women who frantically search the internet for answers and help, they overwhelmingly encounter abortion resources online.
And abortions are what these women obtain. Not care, not love, not medical support, not education, not resources. They scroll silently through search results and often decide, then and there, upon the death of their preborn child.
They’re told that it’s safe, physically unobtrusive, routine. Mainstream outlets even lie to them about what an early pregnancy looks like. Most of the pro-abortion propaganda is designed to make sure women don’t understand what they’re doing when they abort. Abortion is framed as an exercise of a right, or as healthcare. But never as death, and very rarely anymore as a medical procedure with serious risks.
Unfortunately, they seldom realize what they’ve done until it’s far too late. For some women, the grief hits them when they see at last the tiny child lying on their bathroom floor or floating in their toilet. For others, it’s more muted, more complex: Grief over a life cut far too short, the quiet nagging grief of the unknown motherhood they gave up.
But this grief, as terrible as it is, is far from the worst harm done by chemical abortion. There is a death involved in even the “safest” abortions. A child dies even when the mother avoids suffering.
But far too often, the mother does suffer — and she suffers needlessly. Abortion at home produces noticeably more adverse outcomes than surgical abortion does. More women end up in the ER after chemical abortions than they do with surgical procedures.
This might sound to those who don’t know me like a backhanded endorsement of surgical abortion — and they’d be dead wrong. Surgical abortions kill preborn children. They are a tragic, evil thing to perform or undergo.
They also tend to require establishment of a medical baseline before undertaking the procedure. The woman and doctor are generally aware of her baby’s gestational age and the pertinent staff have screened her more or less appropriately prior to the abortion.
All of these screening and support procedures ought to occur upon any woman’s discovery that she is pregnant, regardless of the decisions she faces.
So why do we make such a total and glib exception for women who choose to abort at home, where we can’t see or hear? Why is it the case that women who suffer out of sight are presumed not to suffer at all?
Every woman deserves, at the very least, ethical medical care and all the information she needs to make a fully-informed decision. This is far beyond the scope of our politicians and the president, whoever they might be. The elections are ultimately a very small part of a much larger pro-life effort.
Saving lives happens person by person, child by child. Regulations and political measures are inevitably incomplete answers to the problem of abortion.
No politician or president can alleviate a vulnerable woman’s suffering, or give her a loving and dependable relationship as she makes what will probably be her life’s most difficult decision. The staff and resources she encounters during that critical “fight or flight” period have the potential to permanently change the course of her life, for better and for worse. That’s why we owe women everything we can offer them. And it’s why PreBorn! network pregnancy clinics are trained to provide her precisely this information and care.
Of course we hope and pray that she will trust us enough to help her keep her child. We hope to save children and souls every time a mother comes to us for help. But she must choose freely to accept that help, and extend that trust.
It is an unconscionably evil form of medical malpractice to mail women abortions. It will take far more than a policy-level response to succeed in stopping it. After the fall of Roe, the pro-life landscape fractured. The pro-abortion movement became vastly more complex — and arguably, more effective.
Anyone who hopes that a single presidential election will successfully eliminate this problem is gravely misguided.
This is the legacy of Roe — and in its own way, the legacy of Dobbs. We must rise to meet it, and strive to alter it life-by-life.
The abortion regime is terrible, but with God’s help and our hands, it is not inevitable.
Dan Steiner serves as founder and president of PreBorn!, which serves the pregnancy clinic movement across America by placing ultrasound machines as well as providing executive and sonographer coaching, organizational development, marketing and fundraising.