FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: January 19, 2023
Contact: Mary Owens, [email protected]
Letter: “Though the FDA has abdicated its responsibility to protect women’s health, we have not.”
Washington, D.C. –Today Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America praised 22 pro-life state attorneys general, led by Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall, for sending a letter to U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf urging the FDA to reverse its dangerous decision to eliminate in-person distribution of mifepristone. That decision earlier this month expanded the market for dangerous chemical abortion drugs to include retail pharmacies as well as by mail order.
In November, a group of doctors led by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine sued the FDA for its reckless and inadequate screening of the dangerous abortion drug regimen including mifepristone.
The letter reads in part:
The authority to regulate abortion lies with the people and their elected representatives. In our states, we prioritize the health and safety of women and children and our laws reflect this.
Though the FDA has abdicated its responsibility to protect women’s health, we have not. To be crystal clear, you have not negated any of our laws that forbid the remote prescription, administration, and use of abortion-inducing drugs. The health and safety of our citizens—women and children included—is of paramount concern. Nothing in the FDA’s recent changes affects how we will protect our people.
Katie Glenn, SBA Pro-Life America’s state policy director, added:
“We applaud Attorney General Steve Marshall and his colleagues for standing with women and unborn children against dangerous mail-order abortion drugs. State-level safeguards ensure that women receive screening and access to follow-up care, give informed consent, and are offered support and information about alternatives to abortion. The people have the right to protect life in their laws and the radically pro-abortion Biden administration cannot block that right.
“The FDA’s betrayal of American women who rely on them to provide transparent, accurate information does not change anything in states with pro-life laws. But every woman deserves these protections, regardless of where she lives, works or attends school. The FDA should reverse its ideological decision and actually follow the science—which points only in the direction of greater oversight of these dangerous drugs.”
Chemical abortion, sometimes called “the abortion pill” (RU-486, mifepristone or Mifeprex), is a two-drug regimen taken up to 70 days (10 weeks) or even later into pregnancy and causes the death of the unborn child. The first drug blocks the natural hormone progesterone, starving the developing baby of hormonal support, while the second drug induces labor to expel the baby from the womb.
Multiple peer-reviewed studies confirm that women are at risk of severe side effects after taking chemical abortion pills, including hemorrhaging, the need for follow-up surgery, and even death. Studies have found that chemical abortion has four times the complication rate of surgical abortion, and these risks only increase with advanced pregnancy and lack of medical supervision. Peer-reviewed research from Charlotte Lozier Institute has also found that after a chemical abortion there is a 53% greater risk for an ER visit for abortion complications than after a surgical abortion.
For more information on the dangers of chemical abortion visit abortiondrugfacts.com.
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is a network of more than one million pro-life Americans nationwide, dedicated to ending abortion by electing national leaders and advocating for laws that save lives, with a special calling to promote pro-life women leaders.
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