By Kara Grace Hess, Senior Associate Editor
Donna Harrison, a physician and the director of research at the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), spoke to a group of 46 students, faculty, staff and community members in the Phelps Room on Tuesday, Nov. 18, at 7 p.m. The event, titled “Let’s talk about chemical abortion,” was organized by Wheaton College’s Voice for Life club and sponsored by the Office of Ministry and Evangelism.
Harrison is also an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and serves on the advisory board for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity. The club advertised the talk as a way for students to gain a “greater understanding of the increasingly prevalent topic of the abortion pill.”
Harrison’s talk covered definitions of abortion, self-administered abortion, issues with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, and approaches to reaching women who are seeking abortions. Her lecture specifically responded to the loosening restrictions around prescribing and using abortion pills such as mifepristone.
“It’s bigger for me. It’s not just, ‘let’s make abortion illegal.’ It’s ‘let’s change the heart and mind in this country about why we’re alive and our responsibilities to neighbors,’” she said.
Steven Park, historian and director of academic and scholarly technology at the college, left the lecture concerned about what he believes is a dangerous questioning of the definition of what it means to be human.
“In the hallmark of history, this period is not gonna look good for us, because whenever you’ve treated someone less than human— whether they’re enslaved persons, Native American Indians, the mentally ill — we come around and there’s some reckoning,” he said.
In 2016, the FDA decreased the dosage of mifepristone, reduced the required doctor visits for a prescription and extended the gestational age during which a woman can take the pill from seven to 10 weeks. In 2021, in response to COVID-19, the Biden administration allowed mifepristone and misoprostol — pills used to induce abortions and treat miscarriages — to be mailed to patients, reversing the prior in-person dispensing requirement.
Citing Wikipedia, Harrison shared the “layperson’s definition” of abortion: “the termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus.” She contrasted this with the definition developed by AAPLOG, which defined abortion as the result of a drug or procedure to intentionally cause the death of a child.
Yale Medicine provides a medical definition that differs from both shared in the talk, indicating that abortion can be either the intentional or unintentional termination of a pregnancy and includes miscarriage in its explanation.
Harrison addressed the implications of a miscarriage and an ectopic pregnancy. She said that in a miscarriage, the baby has already died, so no action regarding the pregnancy could result in a live birth.
Regarding ectopic pregnancies, she said that according to the Charlotte Lozier Institute, a baby is still alive outside the uterus in 5-7% of cases. In those instances, she said, a separation of the mother and the baby in the fallopian tube is required before the situation becomes life-threatening. The embryo would not be viable outside the womb and would otherwise pose a significant risk to the mother, including the potential for life-threatening bleeding.
Therefore, Harrison said, this operation is not an abortion but a lifesaving treatment.
Later on in the talk, she discussed the rise of medical abortions performed at home, referring to them as “DIY abortion.” Such practices have increased following the overturning of Roe v. Wade. According to NPR, the increase may be driven by the “cost of traveling to another state, challenge of finding childcare, and fear of lost wages.”
Harrison said that there is likely to be an increase in psychological trauma for women who undergo chemical abortion.
“There’s also likely an increased psychological trauma, because now the woman sees the baby as opposed to going to sleep and waking up not pregnant,” she said. “There are some opportunities, there’s some time to reach her before her mail order comes in.”
This claim remains a major point of contention between medical practitioners across the ideological spectrum. Some studies done by the American Psychological Association (APA) have found no causal link between having an abortion in general and mental health struggles. However, this research was not specific to chemical abortion.
Katie Flynn, a first-year undeclared business major, said she appreciated Harrison’s explanation of the potential risks associated with abortion drugs and attended the talk because she wanted to learn more.
“I think it’s important to realize that abortion doesn’t help women,” she said. “Even though people say that it empowers them.”
Near the end of the lecture, Harrison discussed ways to “reach the despairing woman” and said that progesterone can be safely and effectively used to reverse the effects of mifepristone. This point is highly debated. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), this method is not effective and does “not meet clinical standards”.
Morgan Faulkner, a first-year liberal arts/ nursing major, attended the talk with aspirations to become an emergency room nurse and wanted to understand the risks of abortion for women because she may encounter that situation in her future career. She said she was grateful for a talk that she felt clearly addressed the implications of chemical abortions.
“Having that kind of actual factual information, I thought, was really useful and something that I can look more into as I go to college,” she said.
Jonathan Medrano, a first-year business analytics major, said he attended because of his involvement in several Saturday prayer events with VFL. He came to get more information on different abortion procedures and was glad the talk provided it.
“We need to be radical in a sense about being vocal and really educating the women about what they’re doing, because so many people are misinformed on abortion,” he said.
In response to a question about how to begin engaging in conversations with women considering abortions from a political stance that does not support the practice, Harrison said the most important starting point is an attitude shift.
“I’m not a lawyer. I’m not a politician. I’m a physician. I’m a female,” she said. “I think that abortion is a marker of abuse of women, and as long as our society has the attitude that women are disposable and children are disposable, people are disposable, we’re not gonna solve it.”
Selah Hurd Contributed to this reporting.
