In 2000, the FDA approved Mifepristone, the first of a two-drug protocol used to kill babies through the 10th week of pregnancy, as a “safe and effective” means of abortion. But in their fervor to provide an “easy,” non-surgical option for abortion, did they bypass serious safety concerns that put women at risk? That’s what Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), an organization composed of pro-life doctors and medical professionals, is arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark case that could change the face of the abortion industry.
Here are 3 reasons Family Voice and a coalition of family policy councils from around the nation believe the abortion pill Mifepristone should be banned:
- Chemical abortions endanger women
Under the its 2021 guidelines, the FDA enabled abortion clinics to prescribe abortion pills over video call and send the drugs in the mail, with no in-person examination or doctor required. This obviously presents numerous safety concerns, conveniently ignored by the FDA and abortion clinics around the nation – who are raking in millions of dollars every month prescribing these life-ending drugs with little more than a 10 minute phone call.
Not to mention, pregnant women are not able to self-diagnose an ectopic pregnancy – when an embryo implants outside the uterus, endangering the life of the mother and making the pregnancy non-viable. If a woman has an ectopic pregnancy (1-2% of all pregnancies are ectopic) and then takes chemical abortion pills, it will not only fail to abort the child, it will leave the mother “at risk of severe harm from hemorrhage due to tubal rupture.”
“By removing doctors from the prescription and administration of these drugs, chemical abortions become a blind game of ‘point and shoot’ – where we know with statistical certainty that we are going to miss in a number of cases,” the amicus curiae brief reads. “When that happens, emergency rooms become the default health care provider because those who provide mifepristone are incapable of handling these types of medical emergencies.”
Furthermore, after the FDA’s continued de-regulation of this dangerous drug, the courts noted that complications are on the rise. Some of those complications include: “Sepsis, heavy bleeding, abdominal pain, fever, endometritis, infection of the uterine lining, acute kidney injury, elevated creatinine, hydration, tubal rupture, and unstable vital signs.”
Because in-person doctor visits are no longer required before or after administration of the abortion pills, women must wait for an onset of a serious, possibly life-threatening condition before going to the emergency room, rather than having risks assessed before taking the drug, and a check-up following it to ensure no fetal tissue was left inside the womb.
Abortion pills put women in danger – period.
2. Abortion pills psychologically harm women
The FDA has utterly failed to recognize the severe trauma that comes from completing an abortion at home. Many women develop PTSD following a chemical abortion, not only due to the severe and often unexpected pain and bleeding the medication induces, but from having to flush their own deceased children down the drain.
“We cannot ignore this psychological component of a woman’s health,” the brief reads. “These are mental images of a woman’s own children. Whether a woman miscarries naturally or terminates pregnancy through chemical abortion, mental images can live on forever, carried in silence, like a scar that never really goes away.”
3. The FDA fails to listen
For 23 years, women have been suffering and dying due to the FDA’s approval of a dangerous drug. Instead of reversing course 16 years in, when they saw the damage this drug was doing to millions of women, they deregulated it, making access easier. Then, at the height of the COVID pandemic, when many pregnant women were forced by the CDC to give birth with a mask on, without their husband present, and with no family allowed to visit, the FDA deregulated the abortion drug again so other women could abort their children at home without having to visit a doctor at all. The comfort of women carrying their child to term was ignored while the abortion agenda was moving full-throttle ahead, making it easier than ever for women to kill their unborn babies.
When the FDA fails to listen to two decades of evidence showing abortion pills are dangerous, and instead works to increase access to said drugs, it’s not hard to see who’s pulling the puppet strings.
“The FDA beats the drum of “abortion access” to the detriment of women’s health,” the brief concludes. “The drumbeat is so loud that the FDA is unable to listen to the reports of those on the frontlines being directly impacted by the FDA’s abandonment of its own safety standards. When an agency stops listening, ‘arbitrary and capricious’ decisions are bound to follow.”
