A young, pregnant Idaho woman sat in her car in a McDonald’s parking lot in Ontario, Oregon, two weeks ago, nervously talking on her phone. Her partner pressured her to get rid of the baby and now she was having a telehealth conference with someone from Planned Parenthood who prescribed a two-medicine chemical abortion, collectively called the abortion pill.
This is the story of a client at Stanton Healthcare, as told to The Epoch Times by Stanton’s founder and CEO Brandi Swindell.
The girl was told where to pick up the pills and advised to take the first medicine while still in Oregon, and if she went home to Idaho, she should go back to Oregon to take the next medication.
Abortion is illegal in Idaho except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is threatened. Telehealth prescriptions are not allowed since a trigger law took effect Aug. 24 after the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Soon after taking the first pill, the girl had regrets and changed her mind, Swindell said. She searched online for a way to reverse the pill and found Stanton Healthcare, an Idaho-based life-affirming group of medical clinics specializing in unexpected pregnancy care. Stanton often opens clinics next to abortion providers.
The girl was prescribed abortion reversal medicine which, when taken early enough after the first abortion pill, can reverse the process, Swindell said. Today, her baby’s heart is still beating and she feels empowered to handle her situation in a way that doesn’t break her heart.
“There is a term out there being used: abortion tourism,” Swindell said. “But you know what? Tourism can be fun. Tourism is a very soft word. This is the trafficking of abortion. This is like a drug cartel. Tourism isn’t illegal. This is potentially criminal by Planned Parenthood.”
Planned Parenthood, Swindell says, is skirting state law by luring women out of Idaho to get abortions in Oregon, specifically in the border town of Ontario, where the multimillion-dollar nonprofit plans to start an abortion clinic.
Popular, Painful Abortion Pill
Abortion used to be only surgical, but in 2000, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the abortion pill. It has grown in popularity. In 2011, just 24 percent of U.S. abortions were carried out through prescription medications. In 2020, for the first time, more than half of abortions, 54 percent, were medication abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion policy group that tracks such data.“What can be enticing for women is the narrative and the marketing that is just popping a pill. No big deal. So much easier. Even though that’s 100 percent not true,” Swindell said. “It’s cheaper for Planned Parenthood. The profit margins are much better for Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry. They don’t have to pay a doctor to go in and do the surgical abortion. They don’t have to have nurses that are doing pre- and post-op. I mean, this is treating women like chattel, to do such a serious procedure by just having them take a pill and endure everything on their own for two to three days at a minimum.”
Medication abortions, also known as chemical abortions, take longer than surgical abortions—days instead of minutes—giving women more time to reconsider, Swindell said.
Chemical abortions are often done alone, in secret, at home or in a college dorm room, according to many written reports and online reviews of the procedure.
“It was the worst pain of my life!” one WebMD review said.
“It worked, but horrible labor pain, which is unbearable,” said another.
Although some reported milder pain, others reported intense vomiting and diarrhea in addition to pain.
Abortion Pill Reversal
When taking the abortion pill, first a woman takes a drug called mifepristone. This blocks the woman’s progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. The second medicine, taken a day or two later, is misoprostol, which causes intense cramping and bleeding, forcing the uterus to expel the baby.The abortion reversal protocol is a large dose of progesterone, taken as early in the process as possible. It doesn’t always work.
“There’s even part of the medical community that’s come out and said that this doesn’t work, and it’s a complete lie,” Swindell said. “They didn’t factor in that now, women would have two to three days to endure an abortion procedure and women would be changing their minds. Women are scared out of their minds. They used to go in for an abortion. … The procedure itself is 20 minutes, and there was no opportunity for women to change their mind. Now it’s two to three days.”
“Women are going through this by themselves, and they go, ‘Oh my gosh, I regret that I took that pill. I don’t want to hurt my baby. This is horrible. This doesn’t feel right. Can somebody help me?’ And the only people to help her are centers like Stanton Healthcare.”
The reversal is a legitimate medical process, Swindell says, and it’s available at crisis pregnancy centers across the county.
“Now let me be clear: there’s a small window of time that this can be done. It’s a very specific window of time. Once a woman has started the abortion process, there’s still a window where this process can begin. Sometimes women have waited too long, and the abortion has completed itself or it’s past the point that any reversal would work, and it’s heartbreaking because these women have oftentimes made a decision they regret,” Swindell said.
“We have lives that exist because of the reversal procedure,“ she added. ”We have a baby that is soon to be born that is going to have their first day of school, be a member of the little league baseball team, that’s going to go on to be a realtor or a doctor or a stay-at-home mom, because the abortion reversal pill worked and a woman found this lifeline.”
Planned Parenthood does not offer the abortion reversal treatment.
“We know that one out of four women who undergo an abortion have feelings of depression, sadness, toxic behaviors, or self-abuse behaviors, very similar to [post-traumatic stress disorder]. Most of the studies come from a traditional surgical abortion,” Swindell said.
“What we’re now seeing with the abortion pill, is women coming forward with their chemical abortion experience. It’s an experience that is very isolated. It is one that involves prolonged trauma. Imagine doing a self-abortion, all alone. This is what the abortion industry is saying is good quality health care, and good for women. I can’t think of a more demeaning way to treat women.”
