As it is often practiced, chemical abortion is dangerous to babies in future pregnancies. If a pregnant woman has Rh negative blood type, her doctor must ensure that she receives an Rh immune globulin injection contemporaneously with the moment that her blood mixes with her baby’s, whether during delivery, miscarriage, or abortion. This shot, called RhoGAM in the U.S., prevents her body from developing antibodies that complicate, and may even prevent, future pregnancies. Blood typing and administering RhoGAM is common practice for obstetricians, and it used to be in abortion facilities.
Increasingly, abortion doctors see this as outside the scope of their ethical obligation to patients, placing the burden on the woman to independently obtain this treatment from another doctor. They frame RhoGAM as a suggestion, and downplay the seriousness of Rh-incompatibility in circumstances where blood-typing and administering the injection would slow down the procedure. According to protocols for the “TelAbortion Study”: “If your blood type is Rh-negative, we may recommend that you get an injection of a medicine called Rh(D) immune globulin before you take the mifepristone.” But this is the woman’s responsibility to obtain independently of the study. In the United Kingdom, where the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) has recently begun an at-home telehealth abortion program, RhoGAM is offered for in-person (surgical) abortion but not for at-home (chemical) abortion. No matter how early in pregnancy an abortion occurs, or what method of abortion is used, an Rh-negative woman still needs RhoGAM. The BPAS policy prioritizes “efficient delivery” over a simple medical treatment that will have grave, life-long consequences for Rh negative women who no longer receive it.
A major claim of the abortion industry is that an abortion will not impact future pregnancies, yet by divorcing themselves from the mandates of obstetrics, abortion doctors risk the fertility of the women they claim to serve, leaving women with no “choice” to become a biological parent in the future.
