The Biden administration just gave the okay for the U.S. Postal Service to ignore state abortion bans and send abortion drugs through the mail in all 50 states.
The Hill reports the U.S. Department of Justice issued the legal opinion to the U.S. Postal Service and independent mail services Tuesday in response to several recent Biden administration decisions that allow abortion drugs to be sold through the mail or at a pharmacy. Previously, the abortion drug mifepristone could only be dispensed by abortion facilities, medical offices and hospitals under the supervision of a licensed medical professional.
In the opinion, the Biden administration lawyers asserted that sending abortion drugs through the mail is ok as long as the sender does not know if they will be used illegally, according to the report.
“There are manifold ways in which recipients in every state may use these drugs, including to produce an abortion, without violating state law,” Office of Legal Counsel chief Christopher Schroeder wrote. “Therefore, the mere mailing of such drugs to a particular jurisdiction is an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.”
Schroeder argued that sending abortion drugs to pro-life states is not illegal because every state allows abortions in cases when the mother’s life is at risk and some allow abortions in cases of rape, incest and other limited circumstances.
Here’s more from the report:
Even if a state prohibits a pregnant person from ingesting mifepristone or misoprostol for the purpose of inducing an abortion, that person is free to travel to another state where it is not prohibited. Someone sending a woman these drugs is unlikely to know where she will use them, Schroeder wrote, so it does not violate the law.
The legal opinion also applies to independent mail services such as UPS and FedEx, according to the report.
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Pro-life leaders quickly criticized the Biden administration’s actions as dangerous and political, saying more women’s and babies’ lives will be put at risk.
“Ideologues in this administration are putting abortion above the health and safety of women by seeking to expand access to the abortion pill however possible. It’s completely indefensible,” Chelsey Youman, national legislative advisor with Human Coalition Action, responded Wednesday.
Others accused the Biden administration of ignoring growing safety concerns as a favor to the billion-dollar abortion industry, which heavily backed the president’s campaign.
“The Biden administration has once again proved that it values abortion industry profits over women’s safety and unborn children’s lives,” SBA Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser said. “Abortion activists want to turn every post office and pharmacy into an abortion business … even while studies show emergency rooms are being flooded with women suffering from serious, life-threatening complications caused by abortion drugs.”
Studies indicate the risks of the abortion drug are more common than what abortion activists often claim, with as many as one in 17 women requiring hospital treatment. 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.
Along with millions of unborn babies’ deaths, the FDA has linked mifepristone 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.
Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, said Biden’s actions are both reckless and anti-science.
“Women will suffer the most from this reckless decision,” Mancini said. “Access to chemical abortion without proper medical oversight runs contrary to science and is not in the best interest of women’s health.”
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.
In England, which began allowing mail-order abortion drugs two years ago, new investigations show a huge increase in ambulance calls and reports of coercion and abuse. There also have been reports of late-term babies being born alive at home as a result of mail-order abortion drugs because their mothers did not realize how far along they were.
A group of doctors and medical associations recently sued the Biden administration for its decisions to expand the abortion drugs, saying it skirted the safety review process and put lives at risk.
