Page:Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (5th Cir. Apr. 12, 2023).pdf/15

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embolism with anti-coagulants. She was advised that she could not seek a chemical abortion because it was contraindicated due to the medications; yet the woman left the hospital and sought an abortion at Planned Parenthood of Indiana. The woman was given mifepristone by the doctor at Planned Parenthood and took the drug. The woman called an Uber for a ride home from Planned Parenthood. The woman began to experience bleeding and other adverse effects from the mifepristone. The woman’s Uber driver did not take her home because she was so ill and instead brought her to the hospital’s emergency department. At the hospital, the woman came under my care. The woman had not yet taken the second abortion drug, misoprostol. I treated the patient for the adverse effects she suffered and told her not to take the misoprostol given to her by Planned Parenthood because of the grave risk that she could bleed out and die.

PI App. 216–17. Another doctor recounted an experience where he treated a patient—who “suffered from two weeks of moderate to heavy bleeding, and then developed a uterine infection”—by providing her “with intravenous antibiotics” and performing a D&C procedure. PI App. 886. If the patient waited a few more days to go to the hospital, the doctor predicted that “she could have been septic and died.” PI App. 886. Another doctor testified that he has encountered “at least a dozen cases of life-threatening complications” from these drugs, and the frequency of these emergency situations has only increased over time. PI App. 865.

The risks are only exacerbated for women who have ectopic pregnancies. PI App. 207. This occurs in approximately two percent of pregnancies. PI App. 539. As one doctor explained:

Chemical abortion drugs will not effectually end an ectopic pregnancy because they exert their effects on the uterus, which leaves women at risk of severe harm from hemorrhage due to tubal rupture, in need of emergent surgery or potentially at risk

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