Ted Cruz Was Right: “Abortion Does Not Cure or Prevent Any Disease”

Opinion   |   Nicole Russell   |   Sep 10, 2020   |   11:23AM   |   Washington, DC

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on Sept. 2 tweeted a piece from National Review reporting that he and numerous other Republican senators had written to the Food and Drug Administration and asked the agency to remove the abortion pill, mifepristone (also known as RU-486 or its brand name, Mifeprex), from the market.

Cruz made additional comments in his tweet that sparked outrage. Many accused the Texas senator of misinformation, misogyny, and more. However, Cruz’s comments are accurate and persuasive, and abortion advocates should reconsider supporting not just abortion, but their effusive praise of this particular drug.

Let’s address Cruz’s brief tweet, line by line, and see if it holds up against science—and the outrage.

Follow LifeNews.com on Instagram for pro-life pictures and videos.

“Pregnancy is not a life-threatening illness.”

Critics took note of this phrase and overreacted, spouting on social media that women die every year due to pregnancy or complications from giving birth, so Cruz must be devastatingly wrong.

Some even pointed out that pregnancy mortality rates in Texas are unusually high.

To be sure, there is a pregnancy mortality rate in America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as of 2018, it was about 17.4 deaths per 100,000 births. By this statistic alone, it’s clear Cruz is correct: Pregnancy is not an illness that ends disproportionately in death.

While the number is higher than I’d like it to be, as a woman who has given birth to four children, I must say pregnancy is not an illness that needs to be treated.

As trivial as this point might sound, it’s a key aspect of the abortion debate when it comes to inducing abortion: Abortion advocates, and particularly supporters of the drug mifepristone, support the drug given to women early in pregnancy because pregnancy, to them, is inherently something to be wary of—or perhaps even despise—because it carries with it a baby who is unwanted or inconvenient.

To pro-life advocates, however, none of these things is  true.

“[T]he abortion pill does not cure or prevent any disease.”

Cruz made this point specifically because he and the other senators are asking the FDA to focus on its duty, which is recognizing and labeling safe medicines that help treat illnesses or cure diseases.

Since pregnancy is not an illness, the FDA has no business approving the use of mifepristone, which is designed to end the life of the tiny embryo growing inside mom. The FDA should not be in the business of supporting the use of drugs that can harm or kill people.

“Mifeprex is a dangerous pill.”

What most abortion advocates and supporters of the use of mifepristone don’t know is what the drug actually does to a pregnant woman. They know it can cause an abortion and often many just reflexively support that since it’s consistent with their position. But mifepristone itself is exactly what Cruz said it is, a dangerous drug that induces abortion in a messy, sometimes harmful way.

Dr. Anthony Levatino, an OB-GYN who has performed more than 1,200 abortions, explained how the “abortion pill” works. After the mother takes mifepristone at the clinic, it blocks progesterone, a natural hormone that women produce when pregnant, which breaks down the lining of the uterus. This cuts off “blood and nourishment to the baby, who then dies inside the mother’s womb,” Levatino says.

It gets worse. Mom must take a second pill, misoprostal (or Cytotec), which forces the woman into labor, causing “severe cramping, contractions, and often heavy bleeding, to force the dead baby out of the woman’s uterus,” Levatino said, adding:

The process can be very intense and painful, and the bleeding and contractions can last anywhere from a few hours to several days.

The pregnant woman then finally expels the dead baby and can bleed for at least two weeks, sometimes longer, afterward.

The abortion pill has even been known to cause maternal deaths due to infection or undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy.

Now can abortion advocates understand why so many pro-life people, including Cruz and the other senators, are against the FDA’s approval of this drug, which causes the death of an unborn life and so much pain and suffering for the baby’s mother?

In his comments, Cruz is hardly being misogynist, cruel, or indignant. In asking the FDA to reconsider its support, he’s actually being pro-woman, pro-safety, pro-life, and pro-medicine.

If abortion advocates cared about women as they insist they do, they would reconsider their support of such a harmful drug.

LifeNews Note: Nicole Russell is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. She is a journalist in Washington, D.C., who previously worked in Republican politics in Minnesota. She was the 2010 recipient of the American Spectator’s Young Journalist Award. This originally appeared at the Daily Signal and is reprinted with permission.