Abortion activists are putting pressure on Joe Biden to expand abortions by ending U.S. Food and Drug Administration safety regulations on abortion drugs.
The abortion drug mifepristone is responsible for millions of unborn babies’ abortion deaths in the United States. It has been linked to dozens of women’s deaths and thousands of complications. After England abandoned similar safety regulations this spring, reports of women dying and the abortion drugs being abused to kill viable, late-term unborn babies surfaced.
Despite the growing evidence of dangers, abortion activists in the U.S. are continuing to push to end the safety regulations.
In a piece at Time magazine this week, Rachel Rebouché, a dean and professor at the Temple University School of Law, said the Biden administration does not need the U.S. Supreme Court or Congress to “provide early and safe abortion to many thousands of people.”
Rebouché said Biden just needs to appoint an FDA commissioner who would work to repeal the safety regulations for mifepristone, which is used to abort unborn babies up to 10 weeks of pregnancy.
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“Removing federal restrictions on medication abortion would encourage the expansion of virtual clinics. Virtual clinics’ services cost less, protect privacy, increase convenience and reduce delay without compromising the efficacy or quality of care,” she wrote.
Without the regulations, the abortion drug could be distributed by telemedicine, in pharmacies or by mail-order, meaning a woman may never see a doctor in person or have a medical exam before aborting her unborn baby.
Rebouché, however, argued that the abortion drug is “extremely safe,” and the FDA safety regulations are pointless.
“Decades of research have confirmed that those FDA restrictions provide no health benefits. Medication abortion is extremely safe, and requiring in-person distribution does not protect patient safety,” she wrote.
If the Biden administration acts, Rebouché said abortions would be more easily available all across the country, including in rural areas. In some states, abortion drugs already are being mail-ordered as part of an investigative study exempt from the FDA regulations. A federal judge’s order earlier this year also blocked the FDA from enforcing the safety regulations because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As a result, Rebouché wrote:
… providers in an estimated 20 states and Washington, D.C., currently administer abortion via telemedicine to patients in their states. Virtual clinics, many established in the last year, offer abortion care through video conference, text or telephone calls. Providers in various states have implemented “no-touch” policies, assessing the suitability of remote abortion care for patients and delivering counseling through protocols that have been tested in national trials. Under the supervision from certified providers, online pharmacies mail the medication to patients’ homes.
This situation could become permanent if the Biden administration acts. But abortion activists are not mentioning the risks of de-regulating the abortion drugs. In the United States, mifepristone has been linked to at least 24 women’s deaths and thousands of serious complications. Risks of mifepristone and misoprostol, the most common abortion drugs taken together to abort and then expel an unborn baby from the womb, include excessive bleeding, severe abdominal pain, infection and hemorrhage.
A 2009 study “Immediate Complications After Medical Compared With Surgical Termination of Pregnancy,” in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology found a complication rate of approximately 20 percent for the abortion drugs compared to 5.6 percent for surgical abortions. Hemorrhages and incomplete abortions were among the most common complications.
What happened recently in England also should be a warning sign to the U.S. In late March, the British government temporarily allowed the abortion drugs to be mail-ordered during the pandemic to protect women. By July, however, reports began to surface of women dying after taking the drugs. In another case, a woman who was 28-weeks pregnant allegedly received the abortion drugs in the mail and used them to abort her viable, late-term unborn baby.
Pro-life leaders also have raised concerns about the abortion drugs being used by abusers for forced abortions. A Wisconsin man recently was accused of buying abortion drugs online and trying to force his girlfriend to take them.
Even pro-abortion President Barack Obama did not entirely do away with the regulations for mifepristone. His administration did loosen the FDA regulations by allowing the drug to be prescribed later in pregnancy and allowing non-doctors to provide it, but it kept other regulations in place to protect women’s safety.
The abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol are used together to abort unborn babies up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. The FDA requires that they be provided in-person by a licensed medical professional. In-person exams are important for dating the pregnancy; the abortion drugs do not work well later in pregnancy and potentially could lead to more complications. Exams also can detect ectopic pregnancies, which can be deadly.
