South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem promised Sunday to ban dangerous mail-order abortion drugs in her state after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a historic ruling.
Speaking with CBS News “Face the Nation,” the pro-life Republican governor said abortion drugs are dangerous — especially when used without direct medical supervision, and should be prohibited, the Associated Press reports.
“These are very dangerous medical procedures,” Noem said. “We don’t believe it should be available, because it is a dangerous situation for those individuals without being medically supervised by a physician.”
After the Supreme Court ruling Friday, South Dakota became one of the first states to protect unborn babies by banning abortions again.
However, the Biden administration is trying to thwart state pro-life laws by promoting mail-order abortion drugs, which are difficult to stop at the state level. Last year, the Food and Drug Administration began allowing the abortion drug mifepristone to be sold through the mail without direct medical supervision. Then, on Friday, President Joe Biden promised to make sure the abortion drug remains available to women to “fullest extent possible.”
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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland also mentioned the abortion drug Friday when he promised that the Justice Department will “work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care,” the AP reports.
“In particular, the FDA has approved the use of the medication mifepristone,” Garland said. “States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”
However, this appears to contradict the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which restores the rights of states to make decisions about abortion and unborn babies’ rights.
Responding Sunday, Noem promised to work to protect mothers and unborn babies from the dangerous abortion drugs. In March, she signed a pro-life law that bans mail-order abortion drugs.
“The Constitution does not give a women the right to an abortion …” Noem said, according to Townhall. “The power to make these decisions really goes to each individual state.”
She also emphasized that only abortionists will be prosecuted for aborting unborn babies, not women.
“I don’t believe women should ever be prosecuted,” Noem said. “I don’t believe there should be any punishment for women, ever, that are in a crisis situation or have an unplanned pregnancy.”
Mifepristone is used to abort unborn babies up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. It blocks the hormone progesterone and basically starves the baby to death. For decades, the FDA required that abortionists provide the drug in-person after a medical examination because of its high risks. In December, however, the Biden administration got rid of the in-person requirement and began allowing the drug to be sold through the mail.
The abortion drug is used for more than half of all abortions in the United States, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute. In 2020, the drug was responsible for 54 percent of all unborn babies’ abortion deaths, up from 39 percent in 2017, the pro-abortion research group found.
The FDA has linked the abortion drug to at least 26 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications between 2000 and 2018. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA stopped requiring that non-fatal complications from mifepristone be reported. So the numbers almost certainly are much higher.
New data and studies suggest the risks of the abortion drug are much more common than what abortion activists often claim, with as many as one in 17 requiring hospital treatment. Another study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the rate of abortion-related emergency room visits by women taking the abortion drug increased more than 500 percent between 2002 and 2015.
