“They’re dragging us back to the back alley!”
For as long as some people have held the notion that all humans are equal—and, even more, had the audacity to expect the law to reflect this—there have been opponents who try to recast such movements of equality as backward motion to some dark age.
Abortion advocates, for example, claim pro-life people want to return to the dangerous back alleys, where illegal abortions allegedly occurred prior to Roe v Wade. This is a specious claim. First, the “back alley” rhetoric has been proven to be inflated. More importantly, even if the rhetoric were true, it would nevertheless remain wrong to legalize killing people just to make it safe to do so.
And when it comes to moving backward to outdated ideas, Created Equal’s experience on college campuses demonstrates it is often supporters of abortion who represent antiquated—at times even prehistoric—ideas.
Nevertheless, an honest look at elective abortion today demonstrates there is an effort to move the act into the proverbial back alleys. Indeed, someone is trying to push abortion from the spotlight into dark corners.
But it might not be who you think. And the back alley might not be what you expect.
Scroll Down to the New Back Alley
The “back alley” rhetoric teems with imagery of predatory men and rusty coat-hangers. But, as is often the case, reality is more insidious than proverbs used to scaffold our morality.
Today’s back alley does not include coat-hangers. It doesn’t even involve a physical alleyway at all. Rather, today’s back alley is at your fingertips. Just as people no longer need to humiliate themselves by walking into a brick-and-mortar store to secure pornography, parents no longer need to go anywhere to obtain illicit means of abortion.
Indeed, today you don’t have to stroll; instead, just scroll on down to the new virtual back alley: available on a device near you.
Only this time, it’s not rhetoric meant to scare a populace into voting for certain candidates. Today it’s real.
By Any Means Necessary
If you can believe abortion advocates, legalized abortion hangs by a thread in America. While there may be reasons to be more measured in our optimism, defenders of terminating tiny people nevertheless use their megaphones to warn of a coming “post-Roe” age.
Freelance journalist and abortion supporter Robin Marty has even produced a Handbook for a Post-Roe America. According to the book’s back cover description, this is a “comprehensive and user-friendly manual for understanding and preparing for the looming changes to reproductive rights law and getting the health care you need—by any means necessary.”[1]
“By any means necessary” is not hyperbole. In the text, Marty provides tips not only for inducing one’s own abortion but also for skirting surveillance—see “How to Have an Abortion without Leaving an Electronic Trail.”[2]
And she references the growing network that is becoming the New Back Alley: unregulated online pill-pushers sending drugs around the globe to help women kill and expel their growing babies.
You’ve Got Mail Death
According to Planned Parenthood, there is no over-the-counter abortion pill. But in her text, Marty references a work-around: unregulated online pill suppliers.
These websites allow anyone, virtually anywhere, to order lethal drugs at the click of a button. For as little as $90.
And they promise confidential packaging! No need to fear the Joneses will know your bedroom has become an abortion facility. No one will need to know that your baby is dying and that you may be writhing in pain and passing massive blood clots.
One such online dispensary is Aid Access. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ordered Aid Access to stop shipping abortion pills from India to women in the States.
But Aid Access continues in unabashed defiance of the FDA. In a Facebook post, Aid Access Founder Rebecca Gomperts writes, “The FDA is violating the rights of all U.S. women seeking safe abortion by preventing them from accessing necessary medications.”
Here Gomperts commits the fallacy of begging the question. Medical abortion is never safe for the human who is suffocated, disconnected, and expelled from her mother. But Gomperts merely assumes the fetus isn’t human by declaring her procedure “safe.” She gives no reason to believe this is the case.
But, setting this aside, even Gomperts’s claim that women are being denied access to medical abortion is false. There is a legal (though nevertheless immoral) means to kill your fetus medically.
But there’s one pesky problem: you need a prescription for it.
Abortion advocates just won’t stand for that. Abortion must be available to all—by any means necessary—even if that means sending women to the back alleys of the Internet where there are no regulations and almost no licensed physicians.
Failed Report Cards
In her handbook, Marty references Plan C, a sort of clearinghouse for these unregulated pharmacies bringing death to the post office. Plan C’s website includes a “report card” for rating Aid Access and other representatives of this New Back Alley.
It bears noting that a valid report card should be issued by some independent party, rather than Plan C—which seeks “a world in which the ability to end an early pregnancy is in the hand of the person who needs it most.” Nevertheless, there are important notes to be made from their report.
For example, of the eight online services they reference, only one has physician oversight. And that one is Aid Access, which is violating the authority of the FDA. Thus, every single one of these online suppliers surveyed by Plan C is either in direct violation of the FDA or is shipping prescription drugs without prescription.
In other words, there may not be coat-hangers, but there are lethal drugs being shipped to women in violation of the safeguards of FDA and/or physician oversight. This is the back alley come to life via the world wide web.
Also of interest is that every one of the eight online back alleys is given a greenlight by Plan C for “Product Quality.” However, take a look at the fine print and you’ll see that 50% of these companies were given the passing grade “based on track record of manufacturer (not on tests of pills received).”
That should be a comfort to women tearing open pills produced abroad, ready to swallow and have not only their baby killed but also their body begin violent contractions. Plan C didn’t test the pill, but they trust the company that produced them.
From Back Alleys to Front Doors
There is a better way—for women and their children.
To those who’ve already begun the procedure of medically killing a preborn child, hope is not lost. The New Back Alleys try to hide the truth, but the abortion pill has been reversed for many women and their babies. Read their stories. Find the help you need with a licensed physician working in concert with the law.
To those whose babies are already gone, hope is still not lost. Abortion is wrong—but it is not so terrible a wrong that God’s grace is not greater. Contact Created Equal to find out how you can be set free from your past.
We have no interest in seeing abortions take place in daylight or dark back alleys. Our vision is one of support, love, and protection for mothers and their babies.
After all, the pro-life way is no back alley. It’s a front door to freedom from the darkness of abortion—for all of us.
[1] Robin Marty, Handbook for a Post-Roe America (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2019), Back Cover. Emphasis added.
[2] Ibid., 148.