Abortion Pills: NOT Safer than Tylenol

Abortion advocates have started asserting that the abortion pill regimen is safer than Tylenol. The claim is based on the fact that there's a documented abortion-pill death for every million women prescribed the drugs versus about 500 deaths per year in the US from acetaminophen. They're wanting you to assume that since fewer people die from taking abortion pills (not counting the babies, of course) than from Tylenol, an RU-486 abortion is safer than treating a headache.

First of all, the claim is absurd on its face. Women are routinely told to take Tylenol and similar drugs to address the pain related with the abortion pills. It's nonsensical to say that the entire start-to-finish process of a chemical abortion is safer than any given dose of Tylenol taken during the process.

But let's set that aside. Let's say that abortion pills are miraculously painless and nobody ever takes a Tylenol to cope because a chemical abortion is no more painful than a foot massage.

How deadly is that Tylenol?

The National Library of Medicine article, "Acetaminophen Toxicity," does state that 500 deaths per year are connected to acetaminophen. But it also notes that half of those are unintentional overdoses -- meaning that 250 of those 500 deaths are people deliberately overdosing on acetaminophen. Nobody attempts suicide by abortion pill.

What about the other 250 deaths? The people who didn't take too much Tylenol in an effort to end it all?

Well, it took a bit of research to even be able to estimate how many doses of Tylenol are taken per year. After digging around I found that according to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association, an estimated 23% of adults -- 52 million people -- in the US use acetaminophen each week in the US. That's nearly 2.7 BILLION weeks of people taking Tylenol or other medications containing acetaminophen annually resulting in 250 accidental deaths. 

Let's look at the math again. Five deaths (reported) per million doses of abortion pills. That would be one death for every 200,000 RU-486 abortions. There is one death per every 10.8 million weeks that somebody takes Tylenol. That means that RU-486 is at least 54 times riskier than Tylenol -- assuming, again, that on any given week a person takes only ONE dose of Tylenol and not several doses per day over the course of a cold. 

So ask yourself -- Why are they lying by a factor of at least 54 to convince you that if you have a headache you're safer having a chemical abortion than taking a Tylenol?

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