A pro-abortion legal group has successfully persuaded a judge to issue a temporary injunction preventing the state of North Dakota from enforcing a pro-life law that protects women from the dangerous abortion drug.
The law in question protects women from abortion businesses that use the abortion drug RU 486 improperly — thereby putting their lives and health at risk. But the Center for Reproductive Rights filed suit to overturn the law, saying it is only meant to stop women from using the abortion drug, which has killed at least 14 women in the United States and injured another 2,200 as of FDA figure from earlier this year. The pro-abortion group believes the law will force women to have surgical abortions by delaying their usage of the abortion drug mifepristone.
The law is supposed to take effect August 1, but the lawsuit, filed Monday in East Central District Court asks for a preliminary injunction preventing it from taking effect while the lawsuit continues. While the law requires abortion practitioners in the state — there’s just one, the Red River abortion facility — to use the drug in a manner “tested and approved” by the federal Food and Drug Administration, the Center says that doesn’t make sense.
Today, a Cass County District Court judge issued the restraining order and Judge Wickham Corwin said the law will now be on hold until a hearing he holds on August 29.
Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northup applauded the decision, saying, “This law has nothing to do with protecting women’s health – it defies reason, science and medical expertise in a clandestine attempt to limit women’s access to abortion.”
The Red River Women’s Clinic and its medical director, Kathryn Eggleston, are also parties to the lawsuit, which names ass County State’s Attorney Birch Burdick and Dr. Terry Dwelle, the state health officer, as defendants, according to the Associated Press.
A spokesperson for the state’s Catholic bishops decried the filing of the lawsuit to block a new law preventing wrongful use of abortion drugs.
“Just a few months after the federal Food and Drug Administration reported that abortion-inducing drugs have killed 14 and injured over 2000 women, extreme abortion advocates seek to stop reasonable regulations on the drug’s use, thus putting women at greater risk of harm,” said Christopher Dodson, executive director of the North Dakota Catholic Conference.
Dodson and the conference advised the North Dakota legislators that drafted the bill. He said the measure does not prohibit medical abortions.
“It merely requires that the drug be used in accordance with the protocols approved by the FDA,” he said about the law, which was upheld by a federal court in Ohio.
“Considering the drug’s dangerous record, it is shameful that abortion extremists will once again tie up the courts and fight reasonable efforts to protect women’s health,” Dodson added.
Following its approval during the Clinton administration, the FDA released a report in 2006 that received widespread attention for showing more than 1,100 women had been subjected to “adverse effects” resulting from their taking the abortion drug mifepristone, commonly known a RU 486. Pro-life advocates have waited five years for the FDA to come out with a new report of problems associated with the drug — despite mounting evidence that the abortion drug continues to kill and injure women across the globe.
The FDA released a new report, dated April 30, 2011. The report indicates 14 women in the United States alone have died from using the mifepristone abortion drug and 2,207 women have been injured by it.
Of the women experiencing medical and physical problems resulting from the abortion drug, 612 women required hospitalizations, 339 experienced blood loss significant enough to require a transfusion, 256 experienced infections and 48 women experienced what the FDA labeled as “severe infections.” Given that the RU 486 abortion drug caused sepsis, a potentially lethal infection that resulted in the deaths of women from around the world, the “serious infections” were very likely life-threatening situations.
