Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 26) the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, petitions in a challenge brought by doctors against the FDA’s reckless and illegal approval of mail-order abortion drugs. SBA Pro-Life America’s and Charlotte Lozier Institute’s amicus briefs are in. Oral arguments will be live-streamed.
Physicians are witnessing the harm the FDA has caused. They must serve women and girls facing severe health complications – and they are standing up to say #WomensHealthMatters.
As usual, we’ve seen a lot of false and misleading information promoted by the abortion lobby:
Whether you are pro-life or support abortion, banning all abortion drugs is not on the table. This case focuses on the FDA’s removal of key guardrails on these dangerous drugs, including its decision to allow them to be sent through the mail without an in-person doctor visit or follow-up care. A majority of Americans oppose this – they understand it is not safe.
The FDA has proven to be perfectly capable of damaging its own reputation. Politics, too-close relationships with drug companies, and other considerations besides their duty to keep Americans safe have too often entered into the process. We’ve seen them err over and over again: Vioxx, opioids, phenylephrine, Aduhelm.
And now, more bad news has come in. The Washington Post reports that a drug for ALS failed a large clinical trial only two months after the FDA waived its normal standards and approved it under emotional and political pressure:
Critics say the FDA has swung the pendulum too far, approving drugs despite concerns about their effectiveness by its own staff and outside experts.
“When they lower the standards for one product, however urgently needed it might be, it has a tendency to serve as a model,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of nonprofit National Center for Health Research.
A decision for the plaintiffs won’t keep the FDA from doing its job. Quite the opposite – it would mean the FDA will be held accountable when it fails to do its job. This is essential to begin restoring the trust Americans have already lost.
It’s vital to understand, as OB-GYN Dr. Christina Francis explains, that a “telehealth” visit for abortion drugs isn’t what Americans might picture:
The vast majority of these websites…[people] get online, they fill out a form, and then the pills are shipped to them. And so there really is no interaction, they’re not being screened for intimate partner violence…or is this a trafficker who’s getting online and ordering these [drugs] in droves, so that he can force abortions on his victims.
Another country’s experience can be instructive. In the United Kingdom, even many pro-abortion leaders and medical professionals were concerned for safety reasons when mail-order abortions became widespread at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Opposition to “pills by post” in the medical community was so strong, Health Minister Lord Bethell spoke out against it, calling it dangerous and demanding in-person visits. After the NHS and Royal College of Pediatrics called for an end to the policy, the government repealed it (sadly, politics prevailed and a parliamentary vote later overruled that decision).
While the media are all abuzz about the retractions, the idea that the entire case hinges upon one or both of these studies is a red herring. Alliance Defending Freedom’s Erin Hawley clarifies: “To win before the Supreme Court, all we need to rely on are the data that the FDA itself cites and the concessions it makes about those data.”
Two researchers with the Guttmacher Institute – a former arm of Planned Parenthood – wrote last month that “if [mifepristone] was as dangerous as anti-abortion groups are claiming, emergency departments would be filled with patients suffering from complications. That is simply not the case.”
Dr. Ingrid Skop responded:
I would humbly remind these critics that this is indeed the case, as physicians outside of academia’s ivory tower are well aware. As a board-certified OB-GYN practicing in Texas for more than 30 years, I can affirm these women do exist. I have cared for many of them, and their frequent emergency room care does indeed burden limited medical resources and increase systemic costs.
Why do we not hear their stories? One reason is that women who have had abortions are often ashamed of their actions. This makes them less likely to lodge a complaint against an abortionist or file a medical malpractice lawsuit.
Some of the media have asked what the problem is, since pro-life doctors can invoke federal and/or state-level conscience protections. This ignores how most hospital systems work; when a woman shows up in the emergency room needing immediate care, there’s no time to search for a doctor who finds abortion unproblematic. It also ignores that the Biden administration is using federal law as a “sword” to force ER doctors to carry out abortions even when they don’t consider it medically necessary.
Elizabeth Gillette, who lives with post-traumatic stress disorder following a drug-induced abortion, called out the abortion lobby for gaslighting the public about these high-risk drugs:
No matter how you feel about abortion … women like me exist. Women have found themselves on the bathroom floor just like me in pools of blood…I really hope through this process that the Supreme Court will understand that we are here and we are suffering.
Elizabeth is one of several women who have bravely shared their experiences with us. See their stories:
Roe v. Wade is gone. But Big Abortion has struck back with an epidemic of abortion drug use —silent, seductive, and more dangerous than any other form of abortion.
As a pro-life American, you need to learn the surprising facts that will save lives and defeat this chemical devastation.
Get your copy now.
Get Your eBook
