University of Texas Research Paper with Links to Women on Web ‘Laughable’, says Precious Life’s Bernadette Smyth
Researchers from University of Texas in Austin, Texas, USA, have recently published a paper on the number of women from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland who have obtained illegal abortion drugs online between 2010 and 2015.
The ‘data’ for this research paper was facilitated by the widely discredited ‘Women on Web’, an organisation which sells illegal abortion drugs online and incites vulnerable and desperate women to break the law. This notorious organisation provided ‘data’ on the number of women who bought illegal abortion drugs from the site, their ages, how many weeks pregnant they were at the time of the abortion, and the reasons why they had the abortion.
According to the researcher who led the study, “the findings of this paper contribute new and important evidence to the abortion policy debate in Northern Ireland.”
Bernadette Smyth, the director of Precious Life, the leading pro-life group in Northern Ireland, commented on the ‘latest research’:
“First and foremost, abortion is a criminal offence in Northern Ireland. These despicable websites that are inciting women to break the law and kill their unborn children must be investigated and shut down.
“Secondly, for researchers at University of Texas, or any university for that matter, to rely on so-called ‘evidence’ provided by Women on Web is laughable. It is preposterous that anyone seeking to publish anything of any credibility would rely on an organisation so steeped in lies and deceit. No one knows where Women on Web get the abortion drugs, no one knows what is in the drugs, and women who go online and purchase these illegal abortion drugs from this site are not informed of the very serious risks involved.
“There is no such thing as a “safe” abortion. Whether illegal or legal, the after effects of abortion are the same. Since 2001, at least twenty-two women worldwide have died from fatal complications including haemorrhage, toxic shock, sepsis, organ failure, and ruptured ectopic pregnancy following an early abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol.[1]
“The ‘statistics’ published in this paper are not worth quoting. The very source of these ‘statistics’ is steeped in illegal activity and deceit. This paper will contribute nothing to the abortion debate in Northern Ireland.
“Women in crisis pregnancies need to be fully informed of the dangers of these abortion drugs. Women in crisis pregnancies need real help and support. Abortion is not the answer."
[1]A woman died of a ruptured ectopic pregnancy after taking mifepristone and misoprostol in Tennessee in 2001 (http://www.chattanoogan.com/2002/8/14/25209/15-Million-Lawsuit-Filed-In-Case-Of.aspx). An 18-year-old girl, 6 weeks pregnant, was denied life-saving blood transfusion, suffered a seizure and cardiac arrest and died after taking abortion drugs in Bristol in 2005 (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1026005/Mothers-heartbreak-A-level-student-dies-weeks-taking-abortion-drugs.html). A woman developed an infection and died of sepsis after taking RU 486 at a Marie Stopes clinic in Australia in 2010. (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-03-19/ru486-death-prompts-protocol-review/3899084). ‘Fatal Clostridium Sordellii Infections after Medical Abortions’ (New England Journal of Medicine 2010) (http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc1001014). See more at http://abortionpillrisks.org/health-risks/deaths/ (website last updated 2013).