abortion pill
- noun
- /əˈbɔːrʃən pɪl/
- Specialized
- Many women prefer to use the abortion pill rather than undergo a surgical procedure.
- RU-486 abortion pill
- mifepristone abortion pill
- French abortion pill
Examples
-
I hate it when people try to lump abortion pills, which are legal in Europe but not here, with birth control.
Blog text (24) -
Yesterday, Australia's Therapeutic Goods Administration announced that RU486, the abortion pill, will soon be more widely available.
Blog text (17) -
But the nurse practitioner told me I was eight weeks along, which made me eligible for a chemically induced abortion, better known as the RU-486 abortion pill.
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This is why it is a problem when a doctor or a pharmacist refuses to provide abortions or dispense the abortion pill or the morning-after pill.
Blog text (9) -
Dr. Susan Wood, a former director of the FDA's Office of Women's Health, resigned her post in August 2005 after accusing the agency of using religious rationales for opposing the sale of the morning-after abortion pill.
Academic text (2007) -
The abortion pill is often regarded as a safe option for ending an early pregnancy.
-
In the United States, the abortion pill is available through healthcare providers for those seeking to terminate a pregnancy.
Synonyms
A medicine used to end an early pregnancy by stopping a hormone that keeps the pregnancy
A medicine that ends early pregnancy by stopping a hormone the body needs
A drug that ends a pregnancy by causing the body to remove the unborn baby
A drug that makes a pregnancy end before birth
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly and compositionally derived from 'abortion' (termination of pregnancy) + 'pill' (a small tablet): it denotes a pill used to induce an abortion. This noun–noun compound follows a straightforward, cross-linguistically common pattern, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents would readily infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Abortion pill comes from the simple picture of a small pill given to cause an abortion. So today abortion pill means a medicine people take, usually early in pregnancy, 'to end a pregnancy' rather than having surgery.