The Biden administration urged a federal appeals court Wednesday to allow abortion drugs to continue to be sold through the mail without any medical supervision, claiming they are “safe and effective” for women.
In its argument to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. Department of Justice said the court must overturn a federal judge’s ruling blocking the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone as an elective abortion drug, Newsmax reports. The ruling currently is on hold.
Millions of unborn babies have been killed with the abortion drug mifepristone, or RU-486, since its approval under the Clinton administration in 2000. Currently, it is used for almost half of all abortions in the U.S., killing approximately 400,000 unborn babies every year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The case before the Fifth Circuit comes from doctors with the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine who say the FDA put lives at risk by failing to properly study the safety of mifepristone under Democratic presidential administrations.
As emergency room physicians and OB-GYNs, the doctors said they have witnessed “the enormous pressure and stress caused by emergency treatment from chemical abortion [abortion drugs] gone wrong.”
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk blocked the abortion drug from the market, but the Fifth Circuit limited the temporary injunction and then the U.S. Supreme Court put it on hold. Now, the Fifth Circuit is scheduled to consider arguments at a hearing May 17.
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According to Newsmax, the Biden administration is arguing that Kacsmaryk’s “unprecedented” order contradicts “scientific judgment.”
Lawyers for the Department of Justice claim the abortion drug is very safe, even when taken without medical supervision, and women would be harmed if the court restricts or bans it. Its safety is “amply supported by a record developed over decades of safe and effective use” world-wide, the DOJ told the Fifth Circuit in its filing this week, according to the Washington Examiner.
“When a district court applies incorrect legal principles, it abuses its discretion,” they continued.
Additionally, the Biden administration claims the doctors do not have legal grounds to sue because they are not harmed by the abortion drug.
“They neither take nor prescribe mifepristone, and FDA’s approval of the drug does not require them to do or refrain from doing anything,” the lawyers wrote. “Yet the district court held that the associations have standing because some of their members might be asked to treat women who are prescribed mifepristone by other providers and who then suffer an exceedingly rare serious adverse event.”
However, the doctors contend that they and their patients are being harmed by the FDA’s reckless approval and expansion of the abortion drug.
“Across decades, the agency has stripped away every meaningful and necessary safeguard on chemical abortion, demonstrating callous disregard for women’s well-being, unborn life, and statutory limits,” they said in their argument to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month.
They said the FDA failed to study the safety of mifepristone and, under the Biden administration, ignored federal law when it began allowing the drug to be sold through the mail without direct medical oversight.
They said the FDA and the abortion drug manufacturer Danco have “brazenly flouted the law” for decades, disregarding their own safety data and evading judicial review to push abortion drugs on the American public. Under the Obama administration, the FDA even stopped requiring non-fatal complications to be reported, they continued.
“Without a stay, mifepristone will result in more physical complications, emotional trauma and even death for women,” they told the court.
First approved under the Clinton administration, mifepristone is used to abort unborn babies up to about 10 weeks of pregnancy – although some abortionists use it later. It works by blocking the hormone progesterone and basically starving the unborn baby to death. Typically, abortion groups also prescribe a second drug, misoprostol, to induce labor and expel the baby’s body.
Studies indicate abortion risks are more common than what abortion activists often claim, with about one in 17 women requiring hospital treatment.
Along with millions of unborn babies’ deaths, the FDA has linked mifepristone to at least 28 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications. 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.
A recent 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.
