Before a patient takes any drug with serious potential consequences, the physician has an obligation to ensure the patient understands what those consequences are. That principle is called informed consent.
It is not optional. It is not just a box to check.
A new study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, published in PLOS ONE, suggests that for a significant number of women obtaining medication abortions in the United States, informed consent is lacking.
The numbers are clear.
More than half of the women surveyed — 52.5 percent — said they wanted more information about bleeding than they received during the consent process.
Forty-eight percent said the same about pain.
Nearly a third said they were inadequately informed about mental and emotional health consequences.
These are women who went through the process, experienced complications they did not expect, and reported afterward that they had not been given what they needed to make a fully informed decision.
That is an indictment — not of the women, but of the system.
Researchers noted that bleeding and pain were a “point of confusion for many women,” who expected spotting and light cramping and encountered something far more severe.
When a patient does not know whether what is happening to her body is normal or a sign that something has gone wrong, the consent process failed her.
Nearly 5 percent reported complications requiring additional medical treatment, including incomplete abortion requiring surgical procedures for retained tissue.
Twenty-nine percent said they wanted more information about incomplete abortion before taking the pills. More than one in five wanted more information about the possibility of a failed abortion with a continued living fetus.
These are not rare edge cases. They are complications documented in the medical literature, reported by the women who experienced them, at a scale that demands attention.
The emotional findings are equally striking.
The most commonly reported responses included relief, sadness, anxiety, guilt, depression, stress, and grief. Nineteen percent reported happiness. But 17.4 percent reported regret. Fourteen percent reported anger. And 6.3 percent expressed a desire to stop or reverse the abortion.
That last figure: More than one in 20 women who took abortion pills wished they could undo what they had done. That alone tells us something important about the adequacy of the process that preceded their decision.
These findings carry additional weight as abortion pills become increasingly available online and through the mail.
When a woman obtains medication abortion through a telehealth visit or an online pharmacy, the opportunity for meaningful informed consent — a real conversation with a real clinician — is diminished. In some cases, it is functionally nonexistent.
An estimated 1.126 million abortions were conducted in the United States in 2025. A growing share involved medication rather than surgery. The question of whether women are receiving adequate information before taking these drugs is becoming more urgent, not less.
The Kansas Legislature addressed this problem directly in the 2026 session — overriding the governor’s veto pen.
House Bill 2729 requires the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to produce standardized consent forms for women seeking an abortion.
The forms must include information on fetal development, risks of the procedure, alternatives available to the woman, and specific information about the risks and side effects of mifepristone.
The bill ensures that every woman in Kansas receives the same baseline of information before making her decision — not whatever a provider chooses to disclose.
House Bill 2727 gives women who do not receive that information a realistic path to hold providers accountable.
It allows women alleging violations of informed consent law to file suit without first navigating the state’s medical malpractice screening panel — a process that can be slow, expensive, and discouraging to pursue. A plaintiff may elect to limit recovery to $5,000, but she gets her day in court.
Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed both bills, calling one an attempt to distribute “false medical information” and the other an effort to “intimidate health care providers.”
The Legislature overrode both vetoes by identical margins — 87 to 36 in the House and 31 to 8 in the Senate.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins did not mince words: “These measures simply reinforce that informed consent should actually mean something, and women deserve to know their options, understand the risks, and have a clear path to seek accountability if those standards are ignored. That shouldn’t be controversial.”
It shouldn’t be. And the Charlotte Lozier study tells us why it is necessary.
When more than half of women say they were not adequately informed about bleeding, and nearly half say the same about pain, and one in 20 say they wished they could reverse their decision, the system is not working.
Kansas has now established a standardized base of information every woman must receive — and created consequences for providers who fail to deliver it.
Whatever one believes about the legality or morality of abortion, there should be no disagreement about this: A woman about to take a drug that may cause severe bleeding, intense pain, incomplete tissue expulsion, or significant emotional distress has a right to know — in specific, concrete terms, not in the sanitized language of a consent form designed to minimize liability.
The Charlotte Lozier study surveyed 508 women. What they captured is that too many women are making one of the most consequential decisions of their lives without the information they need to make it well.
That is not informed consent.
Kansas, at least, has decided to do something about it.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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