After President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday expanding access to the abortion pill, the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation has been among groups saying that medical abortions are unsafe.

“Chemical abortions are 4X more dangerous than surgical abortion — and that is with limited reporting,” the federation said on Facebook. “Yet the abortion industry and liberal politicians are just fine with throwing out all safeguards and letting girls get pills online, without even an examination. They. Don't. Care. About. Women's. Health.” 

An analysis of Medicaid data found that emergency room visits as a result of medical abortions increased by 500% between 2002 and 2015, a November 2021 report from the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) said. 

"The safety of chemical abortion is greatly exaggerated. In fact, the increasing dominance of chemical abortion and its disproportionate contribution to emergency room morbidity is a serious public health threat, and the real-world data suggests the threat is growing,” Dr. James Studnicki, CLI vice president of Data Analytics, said in the report. “Women are far more likely to visit the emergency room following a chemical rather than surgical abortion. The rate of these emergency room visits is growing remarkably fast. It is therefore terrifying that the FDA is actively being pressured to eliminate longstanding public health safeguards on the abortion pill. This comprehensive data advocates for the FDA to strengthen, rather than weaken, medical oversight of chemical abortion.”

Biden recently signed an executive order calling on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to increase access to abortion pills, Politico reported. Biden used the event to call on American women to vote for Democrats in the midterm elections in order to further expand abortion access. 

But pro-life groups aren’t the only ones criticizing the executive order.

Sharmin Hossain, campaign director of the Liberate Abortion Coalition, said Biden's executive order does not go far enough and criticized him for telling people to vote.

“We’ve received a lot of lip service from this administration and all the gaslighting calls to ‘just vote’ are not enough,” Hossain said in the Politico report. 

The "abortion pill" typically consists of five pills: one mifepristone pill and four misoprostol pills, a report on YourChoiceLakeland.com said. 

And it is not without complications, the report said. For two to four weeks after the pills are taken, most women experience cramping, bleeding, nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, diarrhea and headaches. Some women experience blood clots larger than lemons, severe abdominal and back pain, or continued pregnancy. Psychological side effects are more common and longer-lasting than physical side effects and include depression, regret, guilt, anger, loneliness, nightmares, loss of self-confidence, relationship problems and suicidal thoughts. Some women also experience fatal bacterial infections or fatal toxic shock as a result of abortion pills.

 Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Pro-Life Activities, issued a statement in response to Biden's executive order. 

"Rather than using the power of the executive branch to increase support and care to mothers and babies, the president’s executive order seeks only to facilitate the destruction of defenseless, voiceless human beings,” Lori said in the statement. “I implore the president to abandon this path that leads to death and destruction and to choose life. As always, the Catholic Church stands ready to work with this Administration and all elected officials to protect the right to life of every human being and to ensure that pregnant and parenting mothers are fully supported in the care of their children before and after birth.”