American Life League Report Uncovers America’s New Black Market for DIY Abortion Drugs
Contact: Tom Ciesielka, TC Public Relations, 312.422.1333, tc@tcpr.net
(September 25, 2024 – Fredericksburg, Virginia) American Life League’s deep dive into the emerging abortion pill industry shows that the federal government is enabling cartel style networks to illegally distribute the DIY medication abortion combo, mifepristone and misoprostol, on a massive scale. The Food and Drug Administration’s 2023 removal of in-person regulations for obtaining the drugs and the United States Postal Service neglect in investigating the illegal distribution of these drugs through the mail allows it to expand unchecked. A new report from American Life League, Beneath the Surface: Exposing the Abortion Pill Drug Cartel, released on September 25, 2024, describes a network modeled after notorious drug cartels, fueling a mounting epidemic of unrestricted, self-administered abortions rivaling America’s deadly drug crisis.
United States drug overdose deaths in 2023 topped 107,000, while more than six times that number of children were killed through DIY abortion. There has been an avalanche of political concern over the massive amounts of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, and even cannabis, that flows freely into the United States by way of Mexican cartels. Little attention has been paid to the trafficking of the pills used in DIY chemical abortions, which are flying over borders into America from foreign countries in staggering quantities.
“Women across America are accessing these pills at an astonishing rate, despite the increased protections for preborn children that many states have implemented since the fall of Roe v. Wade,” observed Katie Brown, American Life League National Director. “It’s clear that the FDA has dropped the ball on this. As the government agency charged with oversight of drugs coming into this country, they have failed. And where is the USPS? The post office is supposed to screen packages for illegal items, yet black market abortion drugs are being mailed into every state.”
American Life League’s research uncovered an ongoing network funneling this duo of abortion inducing drugs from foreign countries into states with legislative abortion bans on the books.
Key findings in Beneath the Surface: Exposing the Abortion Pill Drug Cartel include:
- The Mexico-based Las Libres illegally ships black market abortion pills to American states and US territories that restrict abortion. This is one of multiple “Community Partner Networks” that do so.
- Anyone can buy these unregulated, non-prescribed, abortion drugs. They are marketed over the internet to unverified customers from unauthorized, unvalidated suppliers, with no oversight as to drug quality, purity, or suitability of recipient.
- Orders are secret and as untraceable, as women seeking to obtain abortion pills via mail are instructed how to submit anonymous, cryptic emails using private search engines and surreptitious apps.
- “Lie to your doctor” is the instruction that Las Libres provides its constituents, issuing specific details on how to “hide their abortion if they are experiencing excessive bleeding and need medical attention.”
In March 2024, the Guttmacher Institute reported that medication abortion accounted for 63 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2023. The reported number of prenatal deaths by chemical abortion is higher than 642,000.
Brown seeks to remind people that these illegal abortion pills are just one factor in the current disturbing trend toward DIY abortion.
“These unsupervised procedures—self-administered without continuing medical oversight—are incredibly traumatic and dangerous to women,” Brown explained. “Even legitimately distributed abortion pills come with an FDA boxed warning about potentially fatal infections. The Journal of Family Planning and Reproductive Health Care reports that many women who have taken these drugs report extreme stress and trauma caused by expelling their dead baby’s body at home, alone, after days of nausea, severe cramping, and bleeding. The FDA and USPS should care enough to intervene in this illegal importing of the dangerous DIY abortion drugs.”
About American Life League
American Life League has been part of the pro-life abortion debate since its inception. Since 1979, American Life League has committed to the protection of all innocent human beings from the moment of creation to death with a pro-life integrity that stands up for every innocent human being whose life is threatened by the culture of death. For more information visit all.org.
