In true Orwellian double-speak, Vice President Harris applauded the recent certification by two of the largest pharmacy chains to begin dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone, saying, “This is an important step to ensure women have access to the health care they need.” To Harris, being able to go to a local drug store to get this dangerous pill that not only kills an unborn child but causes serious side effects and even death to countless women, is not only ‘health care’ but an essential freedom.
On March 1, CVS and Walgreens announced that they had received the okay from the FDA to fill prescriptions for mifepristone. This certification was part of a rewrite of safety rules that pro-life advocates say will “transform pharmacies from centers of healing into centers of death.” CVS will make the drug available in Massachusetts and Rhode Island; Walgreens will start in a limited number of its pharmacies in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, California, and Illinois. Although mifepristone is currently available via mail from certain online pharmacies, neither chain is planning to provide mail-order services.
President Biden released a statement claiming retail pharmacy availability, “is an important milestone in ensuring access to . . . a drug that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration as safe and effective for more than 20 years.” The Administration is desperate to defend not only the drug stores’ action but the FDA approval of mifepristone because the Supreme Court will soon hear a case, FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, contesting the radical agency’s recent actions that put women’s lives at risk.
According to the brief by the pro-life Alliance, “Because [mifepristone] could not safely be approved without restrictions, the agency conditioned its approval on numerous safeguards. Yet in 2016, FDA stripped away many safeguards, failing to explain why it was proper to eliminate them all without a study showing their cumulative safety.”
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the FDA was required to “adequately explain its decisions to remove critical safeguards . . . allowing chemical abortion drugs to be dispensed . . . without any physical examination to diagnose gestational age or an ectopic pregnancy, both of which affect the health and safety of pregnant women.” The FDA appealed the Fifth Circuit ruling and the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case on March 26, 2024.
Eagle Forum joined an amicus brief filed by Advancing American Freedom (AAF) that questions not only the weakened protections for women but exposes the “significant scientific and legal shortcomings” in its original approval of the chemical abortifacient.
The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000 using authority created in response to AIDS to approve drugs when two conditions were met. First, the drug must “provide meaningful therapeutic benefits over existing treatments,” that is to say the new drug must be more effective and safer than what is currently available; and second, that drug must treat “serious and life-threatening illnesses.”
Research shows mifepristone is not safer than the alternative, existing ‘treatment’ for unwanted pregnancy — surgical abortion — but more dangerous. According to an article in the Washington Stand, “the FDA has registered thousands of negative side effects of chemical abortion, including dozens of deaths. A study of 42,000 abortions found that women suffered four times as many adverse side effects . . . than surgical abortion. One in five abortions induced by mifepristone resulted in negative health outcomes.” While surgical abortion always results in one death (the baby), chemical abortion results in more overall complications for women.
In addition, adverse events are under-reported because of changes to the regulations made by the FDA. In 2000, doctors had to report non-fatal but serious adverse events to the drug manufacturer, but that requirement was watered down in 2016 when prescribers were told they need only report deaths. So, the FDA can claim chemical abortions are safe because they do not require reports of hemorrhaging, infections, cramping, ruptured fallopian tubes, incomplete expulsion, or any other non-fatal complication.
Is pregnancy an illness for which the FDA can approve treatments? As the AAF brief points out, “although pregnancy may occasionally result in serious or life-threatening conditions, pregnancy itself is neither serious nor life-threatening.” Pregnancy is essential for the creation of new life and the continuation of the human species. It is not an illness or disease! It is clear the FDA should never have approved this dangerous drug in the first place.
Chemical abortions are dangerous to women’s physical and mental health, and the risk is increased when undertaken alone without a physician present. The FDA, by relaxing its regulations and allowing retail drug stores to dispense these abortifacients, is putting lives at risk. The Supreme Court needs to right this wrong and curtail the Biden Administration’s politicization of the FDA.
