Website Under Deconstruction: American Family Planning of Pensacola

This post is the third in “Website Under Deconstruction,” our series on abortion center websites. (See the first and second.)

Today we are featuring American Family Planning of Pensacola (AFPP), which sent a woman to the hospital last week. AFPP is owned by notorious abortionist Steven Chase Brigham, who cannot legally perform abortions himself because his medical license has been revoked in numerous states. (Even abortion apologists acknowledge that he was a menace to women’s health.) That doesn’t stop him from playing a supervisory role, though.

So it’s no surprise that AFPP’s website is full of troubling statements. That’s especially true of its section on medical abortion (abortion by pill).

Strike one: AFPP uses an outdated, non-FDA-approved protocol that includes taking the abortifacient drug vaginally. (“You will be instructed to take the Misoprostol in the form of vaginal suppositories, placed high in the vagina near the cervix…”) Even Planned Parenthood knows that this is a bad idea; they ceased vaginal administration of abortion drugs, on the ground of its increased risk for infection, nine years ago.

Strike two: AFPP makes a promise it absolutely cannot keep: “You will not see the embryo, but you may pass clots” (emphasis added). AFPP claims to provide medication abortion up to nine weeks gestation (again in violation of FDA protocol), at which point the fetus is over an inch long from crown to rump. Even Women on Web—a truly extremist abortion organization which distributes abortion pills over the internet, regardless of the side effects, to women in developing countries who may be unable to access emergency treatment for complications—admits on its website that at nine weeks “it is possible that you might see the embryo. … This can be distressing.”

And strike three, AFPP is using an unusual drug combination—methotrexate plus misoprostol—instead of the FDA-approved combination, mifepristone plus misoprostol. The usual combination is contraindicated in cases of ectopic pregnancies, but methotrexate is not. Accordingly, AFPP touts its method as a treatment for ectopic pregnancy.

It’s strange, though, that someone with an ectopic pregnancy would seek care from AFPP in the first place. Untreated ectopic pregnancies are life-threatening emergencies. They are typically treated by emergency rooms, not freestanding abortion centers. If I had an ectopic pregnancy, a doctor with a reputation like Brigham’s is the last person I’d want to see.