Fashion Magazine Encourages Women to Skirt Abortion-law

The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect those of the Abortion Museum. However, we do post content from both sides of the issue in order to foster intelligent discourse.

[19 May 2026] The women’s Magazine Cosmo just published a medically questionable article on pill abortion. Unabashedly pro-choice, feminist, and politically left-leaning, the New York based Cosmopolitan is a fashion and lifestyle magazine for upwardly-mobile 18-34 year old women. So, this article, “Your Complete Guide to Misoprostol-Only Abortions” by Coleen De Bellefonds, fits right in. Its progressive politics and abortion secrets tuck neatly between fashion spreads and makeup ads.

Pill abortion isn’t exactly a “secret” anymore of course. It’s big news. Politicians divide over it.

The Supreme Court deliberates on it. And, secret or not, it accounts for at least two-thirds of all abortions. That culture train has left the station; it’s gaining steam; and it’s not entirely clear whether Cosmo is a passenger or another engineer trying to steer it.

In this article Coleen De Bellefonds offers an apologetic and a how-to manual for women to deliberately induce miscarriages. In this way, she claims, women can adapt the pill abortion regiment to save money and skirt state-level

abortion-bans.

Normally, pill abortion regiments use two drugs. The patient first takes mifepristone. This blocks the hormone called progesterone, preventing the child from growing. In “pro-choice” language it: “stops the pregnancy from growing” (Planned Parenthood, para. 7). But the reason the pregnancy “stops growing” is the child-in-utero is literally starving to death.

The second drug, misoprostol, induces labor, expelling the deceased child-in-utero. This is the drug that De Bellefonds is instructing omen to take in mega-doses if they want to induce abortion when, for example, state laws

have banned mifepristone.

With this work-around, even women in red states can get their abortions by inducing miscarriage, using “legal” prescription drugs, “up until the 24th week of pregnancy” (Cosmo, para. 5). And even if state laws were to ban this abortion-method, since it looks just like a miscarriage, then – so the theory goes – it would be impossible to prosecute. Women could still have their abortions, and meddlesome politicians would be none the wiser.

But there’s a glaring problem in her argument. And you don’t even have to take a side on the abortion debate to see the problem. When is it “safe” for the pregnant-mother to do this misoprostole-only abortion? The only reference to pregnancy weeks in the article is “until the 24th week of pregnancy.” Yes, she says 24 weeks. Do you see the problem yet?

If you are mega-dosing misoprostole, as this author recommends, and you’re 24 weeks along in your pregnancy, there’s a good chance you’re inducing childbirth not abortion.

To be clear, that’s a very premature delivery. But it’s still a live birth, not an abortion. When premature births happen at 24 weeks, there’s a 50-60% survival rate. At 23 weeks premature babies have a 20-35% survival rate. And the earliest surviving preemie currently is a 21-week preemie named Nash Keen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9toZDPhkKLA

“Viability” isn’t set in stone. Medical technology is always pushing that threshold earlier. Ob/Gyns typically estimate viability as early 20 weeks, just to be safe. So, if women are inducing abortion within that viability window of 20-24 weeks, then how is one so supposed to guarantee “abortion results” from a “live birth”? I shudder to think.

The prospect of infanticide, aka, “post birth abortion” looms heavy over this whole article as Isabel Brown and Harris Rigby point out. Worse yet, Coleen De Bellefond hasn’t ruled out that dreaded possibility either. Children born that early need emergency care, so if they don’t receive medical attention soon they will die. That 50-60% survival rate crashed down to 0% without medical. Remember, this is a DIY procedure, so there is no neo-natal nurse or doctor standing by to rush that child to an incubator, apply a breathing tube, or do tiny little chest compressions to get that child breathing on their own. Of course, De Bellefond doesn’t come out and say that misoprostole induced abortion often means letting your newborn child die drowning in the toilet. But if De Bellefond is as informed on this issue as she seems to be in this article, then she understands that very real possibility. She would do well to explicitly denounce “post-birth abortion” if she’s serious about humanitarianism and not just championing progressive politics.

The problems with this article don’t stop there either. Even if women use this one-drug method long before viability, say at 12 weeks, it’s still a DIY abortion. That means she doesn’t have clinical supervision while she’s inducing contractions, experiencing labor pains, bleeding, cramping, and facing all the normal risks of an in-patient procedure but without any of the clinical supervision or emergency medical professionals to make sure those normal risks don’t explode into a crisis. What if she was anemic already, and “normal” blood loss makes her pass out? What if her cramping reinjures an old wound, causing a massive rupture? How much pain is too much pain? How much bleeding is too much bleeding? What if she had an undiagnosed heart condition, or kidney condition, or blood disorder? When if she also has a gall stone and can’t tell if the shooting pain is from the gall stone or a uterine tear? What if she has a drug interaction issue? Even with the “normal range” of complications, the DIY component magnifies all these risks. Even when the symptoms are treatable, they can turn scary real fast when looming injuries are right at hand while medical professional are miles away.

Of all those health risks that pro-lifers might warn about, and pro-choice activists might downplay – those risks don’t care about the abortion debate. Those risks don’t care about the politics, the lobbyists, the narrative spin, the financial interests, or the propaganda. Ultimately, any honest abortion-choice advocate or pro-life advocate should be able to put a high priority on women’s safety. And that, alone, should raise serious concerns about the integrity of anyone endorsing DIY abortions into the 24th week of pregnancy. This Cosmo article should invite rebuke from any pro-choicer or pro-lifer who denounces infanticide while taking women’s health seriously.