Ohio’s Medical Abortion Law Endangers Many Women: Dramatic Increase In Complications & Side Effects Reported

A medical abortion law implemented in Ohio in 2011 has endangered the lives of many women instead of keeping them healthy. A new study found that numerous women in the state experienced side effects and complications such as nausea and vomiting and had to have follow-up visits to physicians.

The 2011 Ohio law requires medical abortion providers to prescribe mifepristone or RU-486 (a medication that terminates pregnancies), adhering to a protocol set by the federal Food and Drug Administration. The problem with that is the FDA guidelines' last update was in 2000, which means that abortion providers are legally giving medication based on protocols issued more than a decade ago.

Abortion providers said that the FDA protocol is already outdated and safer, easier, and more effective regimens for mifepristone have been studied in clinical trials already, NBC News reported. Those regimens involve a lower and inexpensive dose of the drug, as well as a longer window of use.

The new study, which was published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine and conducted by a research team from the University of San Francisco's Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, found that there was a dramatic surge of side effects experienced by women between 2011 and 2016 than before the law was passed. Ushma Upadhyay, the study's lead author, said Ohio's law "really compromised" women's health, NBC News further reported.

Upon talking to abortion clinics in Ohio, researchers found that the likelihood of follow-ups or at least one additional treatment after medical abortions increased three times from 14 percent after the law was implemented. Ohio's abortion law also paved the way for ineffective abortions, requiring plenty of women to resort to a different technique to terminate their pregnancy.

Before the law's passing, only eight percent of women in Ohio experienced side effects from medical abortion. That rate rose to about 16 percent post-law. Those side effects are due to the drug's higher dose, Time reported.

Four percent of women had to have follow-up visits to a physician prior to the law's enactment in Ohio. After the law, the rate increased to six percent.

Ohio's law also resulted in fewer medical abortions, which is alarming because the procedure is deemed as cheaper and are less invasive than surgical abortions. Medical abortions are done during the first seven to nine weeks of pregnancy.

Before the state's law was enacted in 2011, 22 percent of abortions in Ohio are drug-induced. In 2014, that rate plummeted to only five percent.