A North Carolina teenager gave birth into a toilet after ordering abortion pills online.
She was 31 weeks pregnant, nearly three times past what the FDA allows.
Her baby lived, and he's far from the only one this has happened to.
The FDA Has Been Loosening Mifepristone Safety Rules for Over Two Decades
The FDA approved mifepristone to end pregnancies through seven weeks back in 2000.
It stretched that window to 10 weeks in 2016.
Planned Parenthood now markets the pills for use through 12 weeks, two weeks past even that expanded limit.
None of that stopped the agency from loosening the rules further.
The FDA dropped the requirement that a doctor see a woman in person before prescribing the pills, a rule the Biden administration suspended during COVID.
The agency made it official in December 2021, then let retail pharmacies start dispensing the pills in January 2023.
When the pandemic ended, the in-person requirement never came back.
No Doctor Ever Sees These Women Under Telehealth Abortion Pill Rules
Without an in-person visit, nothing stops a woman from ordering the pills in her second or third trimester.
No one physically examines her.
No one checks whether she has an ectopic pregnancy, or an Rh-negative status that can turn a routine abortion into a medical emergency.
An NPR investigation in 2024 pulled back the curtain on the online abortion pill business and confirmed just how dangerous it really is.
The process itself is simple: a handful of screening questions, a "provider" on a screen, and pills in the mail within days.
There's no counseling, no exam, and no real idea what's actually growing inside her by the time the pills arrive.
These Abortion Pill Babies Keep Turning Up in Toilets, Dumpsters, and Trash Cans
Syeisha Johnson allegedly found out she was pregnant at 20 weeks.
By 31 weeks, she had ordered mifepristone and misoprostol online from a source in Virginia.
Her son was born alive in the toilet.
She called 911, then left him there anyway.
As of the last report, he was in stable condition at a hospital.
This isn't the first time.
In 2015, an Indiana woman named Purvi Patel took abortion pills she'd ordered online at 25 to 30 weeks along.
Her son was born alive, and she wrapped him in a garbage bag and left him in a dumpster.
She's serving 20 years in prison for it.
In 2025, a New York abortionist named Margaret Carpenter mailed the same drugs to a 20-week-pregnant woman in Shreveport, Louisiana.
That woman threw her baby's body in the trash before checking herself into a hospital.
In 2021, an Ohio woman was indicted after she dumped her 23-to-27-week baby in a motel trash can, the same drugs in her system.
In 2025, a teenage girl in Singapore took the same drugs between 29 and 33 weeks and delivered a living baby girl on her bathroom floor.
That baby later died.
Live Action News has documented at least two more cases just like these since 2015.
Abortionists Want Women Carrying Mifepristone Before They're Even Pregnant
Some abortionists want to make all of this even easier.
Dr. Daniel Grossman has pushed what he calls "advance provision": giving women abortion pills before they're even pregnant, just in case.
"Give women abortion pills before they need them," Grossman wrote in the LA Times, so women can take them "as soon as they discover a pregnancy."
Under Grossman's plan, a woman could pick up the pills at her annual exam and let them sit in a drawer for months.
She could hand them to a friend or a daughter without either one ever speaking to a doctor.
The FDA's 10-week limit becomes a suggestion nobody has to follow.
Senator Hawley Says the Mifepristone Safety Data Already Proves This Isn't Safe
The data backs up exactly what these cases suggest.
An Ethics and Public Policy Center review of 865,000 mifepristone abortions found that nearly 11 percent of women suffered a serious adverse event within 45 days.
That's 22 times higher than the risk still listed on the FDA's label.
Senator Josh Hawley has been hammering the FDA over that exact number for more than a year.
"The science is clear," Hawley said. "The chemical abortion drug is not safe."
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the FDA to review mifepristone's safety back in 2025.
That review still isn't finished.
The abortion industry didn't just hand women the abortion to perform at home by themselves.
It handed them the body to dispose of, too.
Kennedy's review is the first real chance in over a decade to put a doctor back in the room before any of this happens again.
Sources:
- Nancy Flanders, "Women Are Taking the Abortion Pill Well Beyond the FDA Limit," Live Action News, 2026.
- Senator Josh Hawley, "Hawley Calls on FDA to Reinstate Abortion Drug Safety Regulations: The Time to Act Is Now," Hawley Senate Office, April 28, 2025.
- Senator Josh Hawley, "Hawley Demands Answers From FDA Following Reports Agency Delayed Review of Mifepristone," Hawley Senate Office, 2025.
- U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, FDA Safety Review of Mifepristone Announcement, 2025.
