The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that it is cracking down on websites that are selling the abortion pill online. Predictably, pro-abortion activists are calling foul arguing that it impedes a woman’s ability to get an abortion through a “safe” method.

The problem is that the drug itself isn’t entirely safe, and abortion activists try to do everything they can to convince women otherwise.

Studies done on abortion, more specifically abortion complications, are few and far between. The reality is that most abortionists and employees of abortion clinics don’t want women to know the realities of abortion and the real potential dangers of the procedure. Any studies that are completed, usually are highly biased in favor of abortion and are almost unusable as sound scientific analysis. Therefore, most of the best studies on abortion complications come from foreign countries and they usually find something concerning.

According to two studies on the abortion pill, women suffer some sort of complication at least 20% of the time. In one of the studies, completed in Mexico, this was measured by the percentage of women who called reporting severe symptoms and pain that was beyond what they were initially told to expect. Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood, once wrote in a Los Angeles Times op-ed that the abortion pill is safer than Tylenol, but 1 in 5 people usually don’t need to call the doctor after taking one dose of any other over-the-counter drug, so clearly the drug isn’t that safe.

The idea that some women are getting these dangerous drugs sent through the mail from a pharmacy in India should be deeply concerning, especially since they aren’t FDA approved.

Every pharmaceutical drug given in the United States by medical professionals must be approved by the FDA. While there are medical tests that are completed beforehand, the FDA is the gatekeeper of our medications and pharmaceutical companies usually have gone through years of rigorous screening processes and testing in order to make a drug available to the public. An abortion pill provider online does not go through the same level of screening, and it puts women at risk.

It has been established that about 20% of women will have a complication when taking the abortion pill, which is part of the reason why something this potentially dangerous shouldn’t be available online. Some of those complications can include hemorrhaging, severe pain, infection, incomplete abortion, uterus rupture, and, in extreme cases, death.

The threat of life-threatening complications also goes up since a woman might never step foot in a medical office and is not evaluated by a professional if the pills come through the mail. To get the pill, a woman has to fill out an online questionnaire where she can possibly give false information about how long she has been pregnant and other possible medical conditions that might increase the risk of complications. It is also possible that an ectopic pregnancy could be left undiscovered, which could be a potentially fatal complication.

The FDA is right and justified in investigating online organizations that are selling the abortion pill to unsuspecting women. Abortion activists, who constantly say that they want women to have continued access to “safe and legal” abortions, should also be fighting against these lethal online operations. This doesn’t infringe on women’s rights—instead it will protect women and their families.