The recent appeals court decision restoring vital safeguards from the dangers of chemical abortion drugs is a welcome step and a long-overdue reckoning for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Americans should be able to trust the FDA to keep unsafe and untested drugs off the market. But the agency has long betrayed that trust when it comes to chemical abortion drugs. Instead of safeguarding the public, the FDA has put politics over science and acted as a rubber stamp for the abortion industry and its political allies for decades.
The FDA’s service to the abortion activists inside and outside the government began in 2000 when it illegally expedited and approved the use of mifepristone, a chemical abortion drug, without performing the required scientific studies. The FDA justified its approval of the drug by falsely claiming that pregnancy is a "serious or life-threatening illness" for which mothers need a cure – turning the English language and basic common sense on its head.
Since then, the FDA has ignored the harms wrought by chemical abortion drugs on women. In fact, the FDA got rid of reporting requirements on the harms caused by these drugs. Yet they now cite this lack of reporting as "evidence" that the drugs are perfectly safe, no more dangerous than taking an Advil.
As the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found, nothing could be further from the truth. These drugs have a complication rate four times higher than even surgical abortions. One in five women who use them end up having to seek medical help. The FDA’s own warning label even highlights the risk of death or serious injury from taking mifepristone – hardly in the same league as taking an over-the-counter pain reliever.
The FDA hides behind the timeline in this case. But as both lower courts found, it’s the FDA that has been delaying and obfuscating for decades. The FDA ignored its obligation to respond promptly to plaintiffs’ petitions, instead taking nearly two decades. In the meantime, the agency has stripped away nearly every basic safeguard on the drug. In 2021, it even went so far as to allow abortion drugs to be shipped by mail, creating a vast new abortion-by-mail regime that now extends into all 50 states.
The result has been tragic: Women and girls are now performing chemical abortions on themselves at home without the involvement of a doctor and with enduring physical and psychological trauma. This is exactly the sort of outcome the FDA should be trying to prevent.
It is a scandal that the FDA has flouted the law for 23 years out of a partisan commitment to abortion. Doctors know that scientific scrutiny would be rigorously applied with virtually any other type of drug, and the drug would face an uphill climb to reach the market. Yet when abortion is involved, the rules have gone out the window.
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The courts must correct this raw abuse of power, which is why the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and others sued the FDA. My organization, Alliance Defending Freedom, is representing four doctors and four medical associations in the case who have witnessed the harms of these drugs firsthand. On April 7, we prevailed in a lower court ruling, and on April 12, we won a major victory at the 5th Circuit, restoring critical safeguards on chemical abortion while the case proceeds. Notably, the Biden Department of Justice is appealing, and we will soon be arguing before the Supreme Court.
It is no surprise the Biden administration is throwing its weight behind the FDA. President Biden has advocated for abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy – a view shared by only 1 out of 5 Americans. The administration is markedly out of step with the 70% of Americans who say abortion should be limited. Yet its chemical abortion scheme is now flooding all 50 states with abortion pills, undermining the ability of states to protect life and help women.
