{"id":1061,"date":"2026-07-17T12:16:04","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:16:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=1061"},"modified":"2026-07-17T12:16:04","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T12:16:04","slug":"the-abortion-pill-has-never-abused-women-men-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/?p=1061","title":{"rendered":"The Abortion Pill Has Never Abused Women. Men Do"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tAs Todd Blanche<\/a>\u2019s confirmation hearings for U.S. Attorney General wrap up this week, anti-abortion<\/a> activists are demanding that he demonstrate his \u201cconcern\u201d for women by protecting them from abusive men \u2014 by making it harder for women to obtain abortion medication.<\/p>\n

\n\tSusan B. Anthony Pro-Life America recently sent a letter<\/a> urging Blanche to resolve a lawsuit brought by Louisiana<\/a> challenging the federal policy allowing mifepristone to be dispensed by mail. This time around, the group is particularly focused on horrifying stories of men who secretly administered abortion pills to pregnant women or coerced them into taking the medication.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey specifically point to a recent case, an Army captain<\/a> in Washington state who secretly gave mifepristone to a junior enlisted soldier he was having an affair with. He pleaded guilty to intentionally ending her pregnancy, domestic violence, fraternization, and conduct unbecoming of an officer. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison and dismissed from the Army.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn other words, the criminal conduct was identified as criminal. The man was prosecuted. The system did not shrug and say, \u201cWelp, if only there were a law against secretly drugging pregnant women.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDrugging anyone without their knowledge or consent is already illegal. Assault is illegal. Poisoning is illegal. Reproductive coercion is abuse. We do not need to restrict a safe medication to punish the people who weaponize it. Mifepristone did not abuse these women. Men did.<\/p>\n

\n\tWe know the far-right understands this concept because its members often eagerly explain that an inanimate object cannot be held responsible for the person misusing it. Every time someone says, \u201cGuns don\u2019t kill people; people kill people,\u201d after a mass shooting, an NRA lobbyist gets his horns.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut place abortion medication in a violent man\u2019s hand, and suddenly the pill is the sole culprit?<\/p>\n

That selective logic would almost be funny if men being accused of drugging women weren\u2019t in the news every day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWe just witnessed activist and survivor Gis\u00e8le Pelicot<\/a> force the world to confront what men did after her husband repeatedly drugged her and invited strangers to sexually assault her while she was unconscious. As a result, investigators are now exposing international networks<\/a> where men exchange instructions for drugging and raping their wives and partners.<\/p>\n

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\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tLet me be clear: I am in no way endorsing the right\u2019s bad faith argument about guns. The facts make that comparison collapse immediately, because the leading cause<\/a> of death during pregnancy and the postpartum period is, in fact, homicide, with firearms<\/a> used in the overwhelming majority of these murders.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd yet, there is no comparable conservative campaign to restrict access to guns because abusive men use them to kill their partners. In perhaps the mother of all ironies, the Trump administration is pushing to weaken gun regulations and make it easier<\/a> for guns to be mailed directly<\/a> to buyers without background checks.<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, anti-abortion activists are attacking a medication they still cannot prove is unsafe after two decades of trying. Mifepristone\u2019s safety has been studied repeatedly<\/a> across more than 25 years of use, with serious complications remaining exceedingly rare. Today, medication abortion accounts for nearly two-thirds<\/a> of clinician-provided abortions in the United States.<\/p>\n

\n\tOpponents cannot plausibly claim that banning abortion has stopped people from having abortions. So now they are presenting domestic violence as a side effect of women\u2019s access.<\/p>\n

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\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tIt is an old trick. When men abuse or attack women, society responds by restricting women. Don\u2019t wear that skirt. Don\u2019t walk home alone. Don\u2019t leave your drink unattended.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tNow it\u2019s: Don\u2019t allow abortion pills to be mailed because a man might use them to commit a crime, as if abusive men are uncontrollable forces of nature. Since we apparently cannot expect men to refrain from drugging their partners, women must surrender access to medication.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnti-abortion activists aren\u2019t the only ones with stories to share. Reproductive health and justice advocates have collected abortion stories for years, and more recently, collected hundreds of stories<\/a> from people describing what abortion medication made possible for them. \u201cI was still emotionally and physically recovering from an ectopic pregnancy,\u201d one person wrote<\/a>. Another told us<\/a> she was able to \u201cfinish graduate school and have two kids when I was ready with my partner.\u201d While managing a pregnancy loss, another said<\/a> the medication allowed her \u201cto remove dead tissue from my body that could possibly cause sepsis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat is what mifepristone makes possible: survival, recovery, future fertility, and the freedom to have children when the time is right. But these kinds of stories rarely receive the same political attention because they aren\u2019t sensational. They represent the everyday choices we have to make to build the lives we want.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe manufactured horror stories are louder, but they do not point us toward the real danger: male violence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDemocratic senators were right to grill Blanche, the acting AG, about the Justice Department\u2019s treatment of Epstein survivors and whether he would restrict access to the abortion pill<\/a> \u2014 and his responses offered zero confidence, suddenly claiming he is \u201cprohibited<\/a>\u201d from meeting with Epstein victims and doubled down<\/a> on his pledge to end abortion by mail.<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd nary a conservative demanded that Blanche explain how his Justice Department would protect people from reproductive coercion and intimate partner violence. Or whether it would vigorously enforce laws against sexual assault, poisoning, stalking, and domestic abuse. Or why the administration wants to make firearms more readily available to dangerous men.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut their silence tells us plenty.<\/p>\n

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\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n

\n\tPunish the abuser. Protect the survivor. And leave the damn pill alone.<\/p>\n

\n\tLizz Winstead is a comedian, activist, co-creator of \u201cThe Daily Show,\u201d and founder of Abortion Access Front. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Todd Blanche\u2019s confirmation hearings for U.S. Attorney General wrap up this week, anti-abortion activists are demanding that he demonstrate his \u201cconcern\u201d for women by protecting them from abusive men \u2014 by making it harder for women to obtain abortion medication. Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America recently sent a letter urging Blanche to resolve a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Todd-Blanche-hearing.jpg?crop=0px%2C0px%2C1800px%2C1014px&resize=1600%2C900","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[2160,2162,2164,2161,2163],"class_list":["post-1061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-abortion","tag-abused","tag-men","tag-pill","tag-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valutednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}