World Health Organization promotes abortion drugs on essential medicines list
Caroline MolloyHere is a roundup of recent pro-life and abortion-related news.
WHO promotes abortion drugs on essential medicines list
Pro-life leaders are expressing concern after the inclusion of abortion drugs in the World Health Organization (WHO)’s latest annual list of essential medicines, noting that the drugs can be “dangerous.”
The Model List of Essential Medicines 2025, released on “International Safe Abortion Day,” had a section dedicated to abortion drugs, which for the first time did not include the caveat that these medicines are not legal or culturally acceptable everywhere.
According to WHO, “the list no longer carries the boxed caveat, in place since 2005, that singled out these medicines as only to be used where legally permitted or culturally acceptable.”
Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs for Charlotte Lozier Institute and a board-certified OB-GYN, expressed concern that these drugs were being recommended for use around the world, noting that abortion drugs “have a complication rate four times higher than surgical abortion.”
“As many as 1 in 5 women will suffer a complication and 1 in 20 will require surgical completion,” Skop said. “Also, a recent study found that more than a third of women who used abortion drugs were unprepared for the amount of pain and bleeding they encountered.”
“Yet, the WHO is recommending them for use in Third World countries with poor health care systems, where emergency care may be limited or nonexistent,” Skop continued
Calling the action a part of WHO’s “population control and eugenic agenda,” Skop urged WHO to “instead devote more attention to helping countries obtain the resources they need to impact maternal mortality, such as blood-banking for hemorrhage and antibiotics and critical care for infections.”
Michael New, a senior associate scholar at Charlotte Lozier Institute and assistant professor of practice at The Catholic University of America, added that the WHO’s decision was “disappointing” but “unsurprising.”
“The World Health Organization has always had a very strong pro-abortion bias,” New said, noting that the group’s website calls abortion a “critical public health and human rights issue.”
New also noted that WHO’s website “wrongly claims that ‘evidence shows that restricting access to abortions does not reduce the number of abortions’ even though many, many studies show the incidence of abortion is impacted by its legal status.”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Political Affairs Communications Director Kelsey Pritchard expressed gratitude that the U.S. withdrew from WHO in January.
