‘Criminal activity’: Tax-funded university billed for pro-abortion study

Aid Access, an abortion business which mails abortion pills around the country, reportedly worked with the University of Texas at Austin for research about at-home chemical abortions without medical supervision, and then billed the school for thousands.

Key Takeaways:

• E-mails from Aid Access founder Rebecca Gomperts revealed the group invoiced the university $6,000 for research by Dr. Abigail Aiken.
• Aiken’s research examined why women seek out telemedicine abortions.
• Aiken is also the Principal Investigator at Project SANA, which claims to “study the safety, effectiveness, and accessibility of self-managed medication abortion.”

The Details:

Texas Scorecard reported that Gomperts and Aid Access billed the University of Texas $6,000, according to e-mails obtained by the outlet. Aid Access worked with Dr. Abigail Aiken on her paper, “Factors Associated With Use of an Online Telemedicine Service to Access Self-managed Medical Abortion in the US,” published by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2021.

The e-mails also revealed an ongoing relationship between Gomperts and Aiken. Gomperts praised Aiken for promoting at-home abortions, saying it had helped “for over two decades providing early medication abortion in countries where safe abortion is not available.”

Texas Scorecard noted that “While the records received contained an invoice requesting payment, they did not include records of the payment having been made,” and that journalists inquired of Project SANA regarding the invoice but had not received a response before the article was published.

“This investigative journalism shows that the abortion pill syndicate is closer to Texas than one may think,” John Seago of Texas Right to Life said. “In fact, the queenpin herself, Gomperts, has been receiving money from the tax-funded University of Texas by selling abortion drugs and then getting paid by researchers to tell them about her criminal activity.”

Why It Matters:

Aiken is not an unbiased researcher; she is a pro-abortion activist. She previously authored a study claiming that taking abortion pills at home is just as safe as taking them under the supervision of a physician. “We now have evidence that self-sourced medical abortion that’s entirely outside the formal health care system can be safe and effective,” Aiken claimed. “Women are very capable of managing their own abortions and they’re able to determine themselves when they need to seek medical attention.”

She is also the Principal Investigator at Project SANA, the information for which has since been removed from the university website (see here for an archived link). SANA stands for “Self-Managed Abortion Needs Assessment,” and claims to “study the safety, effectiveness, and accessibility of self-managed medication abortion.”

Project SANA issued an amicus brief on behalf of the Jackson Women’s Health Organization, an abortion facility, in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Supreme Court decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade. In the brief, Project SANA claimed at-home abortion is “a very safe, common medical procedure, and part of the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare.”

Additionally, Aiken “provided expert testimony to the Irish Parliament on the 2018 abortion referendum” and was awarded this year by the Society of Family Planning for a project with the goal of “inform[ing] strategies for increasing equity in service access and addressing patients’ unmet needs.”

The Bottom Line:

Despite what Aiken and Romperts want people to believe, at-home abortion is not a safe practice with no consequences. A recent analysis of insurance data found that 11% of women taking the abortion pill experience serious or other life-threatening complications including sepsis, infection, and hemorrhaging. meaning one in 10 women experience at least one serious complication from taking mifepristone within 45 days, which is 22 times higher than the FDA reports on the mifepristone label.

[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by Live Action News.]