Although Delaware law protects the right of women to access abortion, work remains among pro-life leaders to educate the public in an effort to make sure correct information about the topic is available to those who might be considering such a move.
This year, at its annual luncheon, Delaware Right to Life will hear from a physician who has dedicated her career to the care of women.
Dr. Chris Cirucci, a board-certified obstetrician and gynecologist, will be the keynote speaker when Right to Life holds its event on April 25 at Newark Country Club. Cirucci is the board chair of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and has spoken and written about this topic widely. She will follow Laurie Chapman, the nurse practitioner at “A Door of Hope,” New Castle County’s largest pregnancy center.
Dr. Cirucci said the primary topic of her speech is the use of mifepristone and misoprostol, the two drugs used in medication abortion, which has become the primary method used for the procedure. In Delaware, according to the Guttmacher Institute, 77 percent of abortions in 2023 were of the medication variety. Nationally, that number is 63 percent.
The federal government approved Mifeprex in September 2000 for terminating pregnancies through seven weeks gestation, a period that was extended to 10 weeks in 2016. The generic drug mifepristone was approved in 2019. Mifepristone stops the production of progesterone, a hormone needed for pregnancy to continue. The second drug, misoprostol, causes the body to expel the fetal remains.
According to the Food and Drug Administration, the medications are “safe when used as indicated.” According to its website, the agency’s periodic reviews have not identified any new safety concerns through 70 days gestation.
Cirucci, who worked in private practice near Pittsburgh, Pa., for 20 years, said she will discuss research that shows mifepristone is not safe.
“What I plan to do is look at the evidence,” she said in a phone interview. “We hear the narrative that medication abortion is safer than Tylenol, and that every study shows it’s safe, and this is an error that we hear again and again. It’s simply not true. And I’m very much about truth.”
Any abortion statistic involving mifepristone and misoprostol is an estimate, she continued, because there is no tracking of medication abortion or any complications. Many women order the medication and take it at home, or it is transported into states where abortion is prohibited.
“Now you can go online and order these pills without any interaction with a health care professional,” she said.
Cirucci said she can only guess why the increase in medication abortion has been so sharp — they accounted for 53 percent in 2020 and 39 percent three years before that.
“Obviously, one of the reasons is that it’s promoted as safe, but what many people don’t realize is that medication abortion is riskier for the woman than surgical abortion in the first trimester. Even the pro-abortion people know this because it’s shown in many studies.”
Women may believe that taking a pill is preferable to a surgical procedure, she added.
“There’s the privacy aspect. Women can do this in their own homes,” she said.
One of the dangers is the heavy bleeding that results from an abortion. There is significant heavy bleeding, Cirucci said.
“Women are sitting in a pool of blood in their bathroom of their dorm room or wherever they may be without a doctor or healthcare professional with them,” she said. “It really has been promoted in a really wrong manner to women.”
Cirucci, native of the Easton, Pa., area who attended medical school in Philadelphia, will be speaking for the first time in Delaware. Despite the protections for abortion in state law, she said she is committed to spreading the message about the dangers of medication abortion as widely as possible.
She will discuss the evidence behind the use of mifepristone and will talk about the adverse reactions.
“Everybody in this country has an opinion about abortion, and we’re not going to change everybody’s mind. But there are, I think, a lot of people who would identify as pro-choice simply because they don’t understand some of the issues,” she said.
“When I speak about these things, the response I get is often, ‘Wow! I had no idea of these risks.’”
The Delaware Right to Life will hold its annual luncheon on April 25 from 11 a.m.-2 p.m. at Newark Country Club, 300 W. Main St., Newark. The cost is $55 per person or $20 per student. Registration is available at www.derighttolife.org.
