In Poland a test can now detect if a woman has taken an abortion pill (and it’s terrifying)

This is the kind of scientific progress we could do without, especially if we see the use being made of it: in a chilling article, our colleagues at the New York Times say that Polish scientists have developed a test to detect whether patients have resorted to medical abortion. Tests already used by the Polish authorities, reports the American newspaper.

The country has one of the most repressive regulations in the European Union regarding abortion. Since January 2021, when the latest restrictions came into force, at least three women have died because they did not have access to safe abortion.

The tests detect the presence of mifepristone and misprostol

These tests allow the identification of mifepristone and misoprostol, the two molecules generally used in the context of medical abortion. The clinical trials of this test were part of a research project funded by the Polish government, in which researchers managed to find traces of the presence of misoprostol in the placenta and mifepristone in a woman’s blood sample.

This was confirmed by the spokesperson of the Wroclaw prosecutor’s office New York Times that Polish authorities had already used the tests to investigate pregnancy outcomes. This tool is part of the registry digital pregnancies, established in 2022 to register the pregnancies of Polish citizens and monitor their progress.

These new tests constitute dangerous technology that could be exported to other countries, such as the United States, worry our colleagues in the online media Jezebel. In recent months, the abortion pill has been at the center of a political and health war that pits conservatives, who want to ban it, against Democrats, who seek to guarantee access to it in a post-Roe v. Wade particularly fragile for women’s rights.

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