Will New Device Making Abortion “Easier” Result in More Abortions?
Article audio sponsored by The John Birch Society

A new device that makes abortions easier and quicker is being celebrated by popular women’s magazine Glamour.

SofTouch is a new device that kills an unborn baby up to 12 weeks gestation in just three minutes and is currently available from only one provider: Early Options in New York City. With the new tool, unborn babies in even earlier stages of development can be killed in just 60 seconds.

According to Earlyabortionoptions.com, the website for Early Options, the SofTouch is “completed in one visit” and is nearly 100 percent effective, allowing patients to leave the office “knowing that the pregnancy is over,” in contrast to the abortion pill, which is 96 to 98 percent effective. The site also boasts that unlike the abortion pill, SofTouch aborts the pregnancy with “less cramping and bleeding” and enables pregnancy symptoms to “subside more quickly.”

At a cost of $1,200, which is not covered by insurance, SofTouch performs abortions in as little as three minutes with little to no discomfort, according to its promoters. Much like the standard manual vacuum aspiration abortion procedure, SofTouch attaches the device to a tube that is inserted into the woman’s cervix, and with light pressure, induces a miscarriage. Unlike the typical manual vacuum aspiration, however, SofTouch does not require the patient to be put to sleep.

Furthermore, the device is not supposed to have any impact on future conceptions, if users plan to become pregnant again in the future “at the time that is right” for them.

Dr. Joan Fleischman, who developed SofTouch, claims that the tool minimizes the invasiveness of abortions and makes them available to be performed in primary care physician facilities.

The claimed benefits of SofTouch versus other conventional abortion methods are clear — if the desired goal is to make abortion quicker and easier for the mother. But will making abortions easier result in more abortions, including more mothers getting multiple abortions? The Guttmacher Institute reports that the rates of repeated abortions are already dramatically high, with nearly half of all American women who obtain an abortion having already had one. SofTouch seems to make an abortion easier than a dental cleaning, while ending in the death of a baby. Of course, Early Options steers clear of any language that emphasizes that point. Instead, it allows abortions to be squeezed into the day and completed as quickly as possible, enabling patients to not give it a second thought. 

Unsurprisingly, pro-abortion advocates are predictably besotted with SofTouch. The Daily Wire observes that Glamour magazine reported on SofTouch in a way that can only be described as celebratory. The magazine article stated:

[The abortion device] fits in the palm of a doctor’s hand and doesn’t require an electric suction machine or an operating room or fasting the night before. A patient doesn’t need to be sedated and there are and no limits on her lifestyle either before or after the procedure. In fact, she can get the entire procedure done in her lunch hour and go right back to work. It’s nonsurgical, noninvasive and is nearly 100 percent effective. It can be completed in 60 to 90 seconds if the patient is less than six weeks pregnant and in about two or three minutes if she’s between six and 10 weeks.

In other words, abortions have never been easier or more convenient!

The article reads like a twisted infomercial, callously treating mid-afternoon abortion as if it were a haircut or nail appointment. Glamour quotes Dr.Fleischman, who admits that her goal is to make abortion feel “normal” for women going through the process at the beginning of their pregnancies. She has no qualms about admitting that her mission is to destigmatize the abortion experience.

SofTouch currently faces opposition from both pro-abortion and pro-life proponents, the latter dubbed by Glamour as “anti-choice advocates.” According to Glamour, pro-abortion groups claim that adding another procedure option will complicate things, while pro-life advocates see the marketing for SofTouch as “too positive” and misleading. They observe that Dr. Fleischman falsified the science used to determine that early pregnancy tissue is more similar to a period than a pregnancy.

But Dr. Fleischman intends to make SofTouch more accessible.

“We research all of our other medical care, but not abortion,” she continued. “Would anyone go get a medical procedure these days without doing a thorough search about the options, where it is provided, alternatives, and the doctors who are providing? Yet for abortion, we don’t even think to do our research. We need to talk about it.”

Yet, what is not talked about by abortion providers is that every abortion entails the killing of an innocent life — regardless of the abortion option that is chosen, and regardless of how quick or easy the procedure may be for the mother.

Photo: Tom Merton/OJO Images/Getty Images