(LifeSiteNews) — Ahead of the U.S. Supreme Court decision last Friday to, at least temporarily, continue allowing the use of the abortion pill mifepristone, a minister for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government announced that it would try to supply the dangerous drug to American women in the event that it is banned.
“… I think every Canadian woman should be following this [case] closely, because the playbook that we’re seeing in the United States, we can’t negate that that could happen here,” said Trudeau’s Minister of Families, Children and Social Development Karina Gould in a CTV News interview last Thursday when asked about the then-upcoming Supreme Court decision.
“We have to be vigilant about protecting our reproductive rights,” she added.
After saying the Trudeau government will wait and see what happens, Gould confirmed that “we have certainly said that we would work to provide [abortion pills] for American women, should [a ban] happen in the United States.”
“What concerns me … is where you see laws in states where they’re actually criminalizing women cross[ing] state borders to access reproductive healthcare [sic],” the minister continued, adding that “we need to be very thoughtful about how we do this so we don’t further endanger American women who are seeking access to reproductive healthcare and services.”
No U.S. state laws have criminalized women for crossing state borders to obtain an abortion. Idaho recently banned trafficking minors out-of-state for abortions without parental consent.
“We remain very committed to making sure that we can support American women if they need that access [to abortion inducing drugs] here, but we also have to make sure we think about their safety to those states that are criminalizing them,” Gould said.
When asked if Canada has enough of a supply of mifepristone to “help out” American women seeking to kill their unborn children, Gould stated that “we’re not there yet but this is certainly something we’re thinking about.”
In her concluding remarks, Gould said “this is an extraordinarily concerning time, as a woman, in North America … and I think we need to be in solidarity with American women but we also have to be hyper-vigilant here in Canada as well.”
While the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately decided Friday to, at least for now, preserve access to mifepristone as a lawsuit against the drug works its way through the federal court system, the controversial drug remains a hot-topic among pro-lifers and pro-abortion activists alike.
Despite the use of euphemisms like “reproductive healthcare” to describe mifepristone, the truth remains that the drug, when taken alongside misoprostol, acts as an abortifacient in early stages of pregnancy. The first drug prevents the hormone progesterone from reaching the developing baby and the second induces labor, ultimately resulting in a woman delivering her dead child.
Mifepristone was originally approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000, which at the time required a supervising physician at an authorized medical center to be present to dispense the drug. Since the pill is used so early in pregnancy, precautions were in place to verify that a woman was no more than nine or 10 weeks into her pregnancy, that it was not a case of ectopic pregnancy, and that she wasn’t taking the pill against her will.
However, in 2021, under the Biden administration, the federal agency announced that in-person distribution requirements were being rescinded, allowing pharmacies to mail the deadly drugs to any woman with a prescription.
Contrary to Gould’s insinuation that lack of access to such a drug makes it a “concerning” time to be a woman, a 2021 study unveiled that since 2002, incidents of women who went to hospital emergency rooms after taking abortion pills have increased by over 500 percent. Results showed that mifepristone and misoprostol caused a “22% greater risk of ER visit for any reason” and a “53% greater risk of ER visit for an abortion-related reason” compared with also risky surgical abortions.
Additionally, the research found that the number of women using the drugs has increased significantly, making up just 4.4 percent of total abortions in 2002 but a whopping 34.1 percent by 2015.
Last February, a Canadian watchdog group also reported numerous serious and life-threatening adverse reactions to the combined use of mifepristone and misoprostol, which the pro-abortion World Health Organization (WHO) refers to as the “gold standard” for medication abortion.
There were many reports of women who were hospitalized and who experienced the “very common side effects” of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, chills, and fever. Even reactions such as severe hemorrhage and fainting were considered “common.” The group’s summary also found a total of four life-threatening cases of sepsis among 43 instances of the oft-deadly infection.
Perhaps most concerning, however, was a 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, which noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”