A former Democrat who says she nearly bled to death after taking abortion medication is bringing her story to Capitol Hill, pressing lawmakers to crack down on mail-order abortion pills she warns could put other young women in the same danger.
Haile McAnally, a Nebraska resident, told Fox News Digital she hemorrhaged for hours after taking a second abortion pill at home, lost consciousness in her bathtub, and woke up in a hospital after a friend found her and called 911. She received a blood transfusion. On Thursday, McAnally joined other women allied with Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America on Capitol Hill to meet with lawmakers and staffers, urging them to curb access to abortion pills shipped through the mail.
Her account puts a face on a policy fight that has only intensified since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. With the Department of Justice now actively engaged in the mifepristone legal battle, Acting AG Blanche recently committed DOJ resources to that fight, McAnally's testimony arrives at a moment when the safety of chemical abortion is squarely before Congress and the courts.
McAnally said she became pregnant shortly after high school. Her boyfriend's response, she recalled, was to ask what she planned to do about it, and then hang up. She said she has not spoken to him since.
Alone and looking for guidance, she turned to pro-choice organizations. She described seeing marketing she associated with Planned Parenthood and similar groups.
"I remember seeing the pink signs everywhere and the marketing that says... the sisterhood will take care of you."
McAnally said she went to a clinic in Nebraska, where she took the first pill under medical supervision. But she described a consent process that felt rushed and impersonal. The doctor, she said, walked her through what would happen, but never asked about her medical background.
"They took my money, and they sent me back to this room where... this doctor was going to walk me through everything that was going to happen that day. That's the consent kind of happened, in that room, and he didn't know me from Adam. He really didn't ask about my background and anything medical that's ever happened."
She was given a second pill to take at home. She followed the protocol as instructed.
What happened next, McAnally said, went far beyond what the clinic staff had described. Bleeding began as expected. But after roughly two hours, it had not stopped. She grew weak. She dragged herself into the bathtub.
"I followed that protocol, went home, took the second pill, and I found myself on the toilet in the bathroom where bleeding occurred, which was exactly what they said. But after about two hours, I was still bleeding out. And I started feeling really weak. I knew that what was happening was not right, but I couldn't really comprehend what was going on."
She recalled lying in the tub, believing she was going to die.
"I just laid there and thought that was the moment that everything was over, and, partially, I felt like it was punishment for me making that decision. But at the end of the day, I remember waking up, and I was in the hospital and my friend had come home, and she had realized that I was laying in the bathtub unconscious at the time, and she called 911, and I had a blood transfusion done."
Had her friend not arrived when she did, McAnally's story might have ended in that bathroom. The fact that she took the pills under the direction of medical professionals, in a clinical setting, not through the mail, makes her central argument all the more pointed.
McAnally's visit to Capitol Hill was organized by SBA Pro-Life America, one of the country's largest anti-abortion organizations. The group's president, Marjorie Dannenfelser, framed the women's advocacy in direct terms.
"Women who've suffered the devastating effects of abortion drugs who are clear-eyed about the lies of the Big Abortion industry are the most effective advocates. Their lives are forever changed, but they're standing strong and having a powerful impact on Capitol Hill and beyond."
McAnally herself focused on the specific danger of expanding mail-order access to the same pills that nearly cost her life, pills she took with at least some clinical oversight.
"The same pills I took under direction of medical professionals, they can be shipped anywhere at any time. I can't imagine being a young woman in college and maybe finding herself in this position, ordering these pills online, not knowing what kind of maybe pre-medical condition she has, and she finds herself in the same position."
The concern is not theoretical. A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that 0.6 percent of women who receive mail-order abortion pills experience medical emergencies serious enough to require hospitalization. A separate study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center put the rate of "serious adverse events" at one in ten. The two studies may measure different outcomes, but both point to real medical risks, risks that grow when a woman takes the pills alone, without a doctor nearby, and without a thorough review of her medical history.
The legal landscape around mifepristone, the primary drug used in chemical abortions, remains in flux. The Supreme Court kept broader access to the drug in place while litigation continues, but federal courts and the Justice Department are actively engaged in the fight. In states like Massachusetts, where Governor Healey recently signed a bill removing abortion limits through all nine months of pregnancy, the trend among progressive lawmakers has been to expand access, not restrict it.
McAnally's political transformation is as much a part of her story as the medical emergency itself. She described herself as a registered Democrat who believed the left was the side of open conversation and free thinking.
"I had always been on the left because I thought they were the side that was more open to having these conversations, the free-thinkers."
But when she tried to talk about what had happened to her, the hemorrhaging, the hospitalization, the emotional aftermath, she said she found silence. Not sympathy. Not engagement. Silence.
"You can't talk about it. You can't talk about it because it's not part of our agenda. It's not a part of our platform to talk about any complications this may have."
That characterization, McAnally's own description of the response she received from people on the political left, stands unrebutted in the record. Fox News Digital reached out to Planned Parenthood for comment; no response was included in the reporting.
McAnally said she expected condemnation from conservatives. She got the opposite.
"I noticed the more I asked questions, the people on the right were more willing to talk about it, which, in the pro-life space, I thought I was gonna be condemned. I thought it was gonna like, 'You're gonna go to hell. This is horrible. You're a murderer.' These things that you always hear from the left that the right is gonna call you."
"And I was like, 'I'm gonna talk about it and see what happens.' And the right was so forgiving and so loving and really embraced my story and really said, 'This is horrible, I'm glad you seek forgiveness and counsel for this.'"
She is now a pro-life Republican. The broader debate over reproductive policy continues to produce stories that cut against the progressive narrative, including the Baby Gabriel case in Texas, where a surrogate refused biological parents' demand for an abortion, and the subsequent HHS intervention to ensure the child received medical care.
McAnally reserved some of her sharpest words for the messaging she encountered before her abortion, messaging she attributed to Planned Parenthood and the broader pro-choice movement.
"Planned Parenthood told us that this is what is women empowerment. This is what women do when they can't handle it. They take this route, and they don't acknowledge the pain it causes."
The gap between the marketing and the outcome is the core of her argument. She was told the procedure was empowering. She was told the sisterhood would take care of her. She ended up hemorrhaging alone in a bathtub, unconscious, saved only because a friend happened to come home.
And the pills she took in a clinic, with at least a doctor present, however briefly, are now available by mail, shipped to women who may have no one to call 911.
McAnally's story is one woman's account. But it is an account the pro-choice establishment would rather not hear, and that is precisely why she is telling it on Capitol Hill.
When a movement has to silence its own casualties to protect its platform, the platform is the problem.
