Typically, People magazine publishes stories lamenting reduced access to abortion that has resulted for some women since the overturning of Roe v. Wade. But earlier this month, the magazine published a heartbreaking story lamenting an abortion.  

Las Vegas mom Tamika Thomas unexpectedly lost her two preborn babies after a local pharmacy wrongfully gave her an abortifacient. Having undergone in vitro fertilization, Thomas was picking up pills that she thought were going to help kickstart her pregnancy. Instead, the pharmacist, failing to decipher the doctor’s note, prescribed Misoprostol, a drug used to abort preborn children within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Unaware she had received Misoprostol, Thomas took the pills and lost her children.  

This heartbreaking story is not about victims of bad handwriting. Rather, these two children were the victims of bad ideas and our culture’s upside-down thinking about women, the preborn, and the purpose of medicine.