What You Should Know Before Buying Abortion Pills Online
If you're searching online for abortion pills right now, you're probably scared. Maybe you just found out you're pregnant.
Maybe you feel like you don't have another option, and you just want this to be over quickly and quietly. That's a real feeling, and you're not alone in it. A lot of women in Southwest Virginia have sat exactly where you're sitting, phone in hand, looking for the fastest way through.
Before you hit "buy," though, there are some things about ordering abortion pills online that most of those websites won't tell you. Not because anyone wants to scare you, but because your safety matters more than a sale.
You Don't Actually Know What's In The Pill
When you buy abortion medication from an overseas pharmacy or an anonymous website, there's no real way to verify what you're taking.
The FDA has issued warnings about counterfeit abortion pills being sold online. Some contain the wrong dosage. Some contain a different medication entirely.
Some contain contaminants from unregulated manufacturing facilities that no health agency has ever inspected. You might get what you ordered. You might not. There's no guarantee either way, and no one you can hold accountable if something goes wrong.
Ectopic Pregnancy Is The Reason A Clinic Visit Matters
This is the big one. It's the reason almost every legitimate medical provider requires an ultrasound before prescribing abortion pills.
A small percentage of pregnancies are ectopic, meaning the embryo has implanted outside the uterus, usually in a fallopian tube.
Abortion pills will not end an ectopic pregnancy. What they will do is mask the symptoms while the pregnancy keeps growing, which can lead to a ruptured tube and internal bleeding. Ectopic pregnancy is one of the leading causes of pregnancy-related death in the first trimester. The good news is that it's very treatable when caught early.
You can't feel whether a pregnancy is ectopic. A home pregnancy test can't tell you either. The only way to know is through an ultrasound.
How Far Along You Are Changes Everything
Abortion pills are only approved up to a certain point in pregnancy, and the risks climb significantly the further along you are. Dating a pregnancy at home based on your last period is often off by weeks, especially if your cycle is irregular or you weren't tracking it closely.
Without an ultrasound to confirm gestational age, you could end up taking medication that's no longer safe for where you actually are in the pregnancy. That raises the likelihood of heavy bleeding, an incomplete abortion, or needing emergency surgery afterward.
There's No One To Call At 2 AM
If something goes wrong after you take medication you ordered online, you're on your own. Bleeding that soaks through more than two pads an hour, fever, severe pain, or signs that the abortion wasn't complete are all real possibilities.
Women do end up in emergency rooms because of them. When you go through an actual medical provider, you have someone to call when that happens.
When you order from a website in another country, all you have is a tracking number and a return address that probably doesn't exist.
What Happens To Your Body Afterward Matters Too
There's a blood test called the Rh factor that affects how your body responds to pregnancy. If you're Rh-negative and don't receive a specific injection after an abortion or a miscarriage, it can cause serious complications in any future pregnancy you have, including pregnancy loss years down the line. Online pill sellers don't test for this. Most of them don't even mention it exists.
You Have Real Options, And You Have Time
Here's what a lot of women in the New River Valley don't realize. You can come to Valley Women's Clinic and get a free ultrasound, a free pregnancy confirmation, and real medical information about your situation without anyone pressuring you and without paying anything. We're not an abortion clinic, and we're not going to pretend to be one.
What we will do is tell you the truth about what's happening in your body, how far along you actually are, and what that means for the decisions in front of you.
You don't have to decide anything the day you walk in. A lot of women come in thinking they know what they want to do and leave with more information than they expected. They make their decision from a place of knowing instead of guessing in the middle of the night on a website they'd never heard of yesterday.
If you're seriously thinking about abortion pills, the safest thing you can do before you order anything is to confirm the pregnancy is viable and in the right place. One appointment could be the difference between a choice you make with full information and a medical emergency you didn't see coming.
Book a free, confidential appointment with us online, or give us a call. There's no cost, no judgment, and no catch. Whatever you decide after that is still your decision. We just want to make sure you have the facts first.