Planned Parenthood recently launched a campaign to teach people about at-home abortion, giving women more incentive to use the “abortion pill,” the Center for Human and Family Rights said.

This prompted March for Life to criticize the move for jeopardizing women’s health.

"Planned Parenthood continues to put women's lives at risk as it facilitates the sale of illegal abortion pills,” March for Life, a pro-life group that organizes marches across the country, posted on Twitter. “The abortion company even instructs women to lie to healthcare providers if they experience complications from a self-induced abortion.”

The Catholic Church has opposed abortion for centuries, arguing against evolving biological theories about when life begins, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) said. The Catechism directs against it, saying: "'Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law' (No. 2271)."

After the June Supreme Court decision that charges state legislatures with determining abortion laws within their boundaries, Archbishop Nelson J. Perez of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia spoke about the topic.

“As Catholics, we believe that life is God’s most precious gift and that we share a responsibility to uphold its beauty and sanctity from conception to natural death,” he said in a statement at the time.

The Planned Parenthood online course mentions HowToUseAbortionPill.org, a website run by anonymous nonprofit organizations; a C-Fam report said. The website says women should dispose of “anything recognizable,” and it pays little heed to a state or country’s abortion laws. The site also credits the World Health Organization (WHO), whose “self-care guidance” encourages women to disregard the legal ramifications of their actions.

The International Planned Parenthood Federation is the largest provider of abortions, and it has worked for lenient abortion laws across the nation. It said it is “successfully advocat[ing] for the country registration of medical abortion drugs and for their inclusion into national essential medicine lists.” 

The WHO maintains a “global essential medicines list” that includes abortion pills, which were designated a “core” medicine in 2019. At that time, the WHO also deleted “a caveat saying [the pills] should be used with close medical supervision.”

The “abortion pill” is usually a five-pill regimen, a report from A Woman’s Choice said. One mifepristone pill and four misoprostol pills are ingested. For several weeks after the pills are taken, most women experience cramping, bleeding, nausea, vomiting, fever, chills, diarrhea and headaches. Some women reported that they passed lemon-sized large blood clots and suffered severe abdominal and back pain. In a small percentage of cases, the pregnancy was not terminated. 

Psychological side effects included depression, regret, guilt, anger, loneliness, nightmares, loss of self-confidence, relationship problems and suicidal ideation; the American Pregnancy Association’s information in the report said. Additionally, some women have died from bacterial infections or toxic shock as a result of abortion pills. 

A Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) report on an analysis of Medicaid data found that emergency room visits related to medical abortions increased by 500% between 2002 and 2015, 

“The safety of chemical abortion is greatly exaggerated,” Dr. James Studnicki, CLI vice president of Data Analytics, said in the report. “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.

“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.”