As more and more studies expose the dangers of chemical abortion pills, pro-abortion activists are panicking. Yet instead of admitting that their pro-woman charade is failing, they have resorted to a much less admirable, and far more predictable, tactic: rewriting the truth.

A Ms. magazine article from earlier this year advertised a “late period” site that markets chemical abortion pills as “late period pills.” The site intentionally misleads readers regarding the pills, marketing them as “medications you can take if your period is late and you suspect that you are pregnant when you don’t want to be.” Additional explanations claim “period pills bring on your period when it is late.” This claim is not only wildly misleading, but it is also inherently dangerous.

It is an outright falsehood to claim the result of the two-step chemical abortion drug regimen is the same as a period. A period is a naturally occurring reproductive phenomenon that takes place at the end of a woman’s hormonal cycle if she has not conceived a child. If the woman is hormonally balanced and healthy, her period will be mostly painless since it is part of her natural biological cycle.

Conversely, chemical abortion involves a two-drug regimen intended to end a life in the womb and prompt a woman’s body to expel the remains. To achieve this goal, a woman takes the first drug in the two-step process, mifepristone, which starves her unborn child of nutrients until the baby dies. Then, 24 to 48 hours after mifepristone is taken, the second drug, misoprostol, is taken. This drug causes contractions that expel the unborn child.

This process comes with risks. The Food and Drug Administration’s own label on the drugs admits that one in 25 women who take the two-drug regimen will end up in the emergency room. Moreover, recent studies revealed that 10.93% of women experience serious adverse events after undergoing the two-drug regimen.

These are mere statistics. Yet countless women have testified to the gruesome experiences they had after taking the chemical abortion pill, which often involves intense pain, cramping, excessive bleeding, and, occasionally, the trauma of seeing the dead body of an unborn baby in the toilet or on the bathroom floor.

This, coupled with the extreme pain that typically accompanies the process, is traumatizing for women. Far from what the site suggests, this process is not natural, and it is not painless.

Yet the “late-period” site intentionally obscures the truth behind the pills.

“Some people may call this abortion,” the website says, “But you do not have to take a pregnancy test or confirm you are pregnant before using period pills …. Getting period pills by mail is medically very safe, but may come with legal risk.”

Upon clicking a button labelled “get period pills now,” site visitors will find themselves at a national directory of providers that will distribute the chemical abortion pills. As a Virginia resident, I was curious to see how many providers are practicing in Virginia.

Clicking on the Virginia directory, I found five providers, medical professionals who are okay with dispensing chemical abortion via the mail and intentionally confusing women about the severity of the process. Between the “period pill” website’s obfuscations and doctors’ willingness to dispense them without an in-person visit, women in need will be left confused and vulnerable to the effects of a life-ending drug.