World Wide Web Abortions

Photo by Mike Licht

See, this is exactly what happens when you allow incompetents to use computers and get on the Internets. Silly women persons order abortifacient drugs online and use them to terminate pregnancies.

Women on Web, the site profiled in the article [but not linked to because, you know, abortion cooties], helps women around the world gain access to a safe medical abortion (with the pills mifepristone and misoprostol) in order to reduce the number of deaths due to unsafe abortions.

According to the BBC, Women on Web posts the drugs only to countries where abortion is heavily restricted, and to women who declare they are less than nine weeks' pregnant. There's also no charge for the drugs; rather a minimal donation is requested.

This is the first I hear of Women on Web so I have no experience with this site. I did a quick check of the content and, in my professional opinion, the information is medically accurate and the reference list is reputable.

My reaction to Women on Web? In theory, I think it's pathetic (not to mention potentially high-risk) that some patients have to resort to DIY specialized medical care just because they happen to be pregnant. In practice, when your reality is that your access to proper medical care is at the mercy of strangers, it's preferable to obtain care from (apparently) competent strangers like Women on Web, rather than some unqualified black marketeer.

In closing, I leave you with this bit of [deranged] comic relief, courtesy of an anti-abortion crusader cited in the article:

Josephine Quintavalle, from the group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said: "This is very worrying indeed. It represents further trivialisation of the value of the unborn child.

"It's like taking abortion into the shadows. These drugs have side-effects and tragedies will increase."

Good thing then that the unborn child receptacles have no value, and laws banning abortion aren't like, you know, taking abortion into the shadows.