During the Supreme Court hearing yesterday on the dangerous abortion pill mifepristone, Justice Clarence Thomas brought up the Comstock Act.
The Comstock Act is an 1873 law that prohibits mailing of any “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion.” And it could be enforced to prohibit mail-order abortion sales nationwide — which is especially important given the fact that over a majority of abortions know involve the dangerous abortion drug that starves a baby to death and expels his or her body.
In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk quoted a federal law called the Comstock Act that prohibits mailing any type of abortion drug or device.
And in its decision last year in the case, the 5th Circuit ruled that abortionists are no longer allowed to send chemical abortion drugs through the mail, which the FDA had been allowing since 2021, in direct violation of longstanding federal law. The appeals court agreed that the Comstock Act prohibits mailing abortion drugs and it said the doctors who brought the case had legal standing because they had treated so many women injured by abortion drugs.
The appeals court said that “as a result of F.D.A.’s failure to regulate this potent drug, these doctors have had to devote significant time and resources to caring for women experiencing mifepristone’s harmful effects. This harm is sufficiently concrete.”
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During the oral arguments yesterday, Justice Thomas mentioned the violation of the Comstock Act and the attorney for Danco Labs, which makes and sells the abortion pill in the United States, tried to claim that her abortion business was exempt from it. Thomas would have none of that.
“My problem is that you are private,” he told the attorney. “The statute doesn’t have this sort of safe harbor that you are suggesting … It specifically covers drugs such as yours.”
Judge Ho, who was part of the 5th circuit court of appeals panel that issued the ruling blocking mail-order abortions, cited the act as well.
By the applicant’s own admission, the FDA used an unlawful procedure when it approved mifepristone. And the agency’s later regulations are likewise invalid—both under the APA as the majority outlines, and under the Comstock Act as well. In sum, the regulations are “not in accordance with law” and therefore must be set aside. Accordingly, we should affirm.
Scientists have contributed an enormous amount to improving our lives. But scientists are human beings just like the rest of us. They’re not perfect. None of us are. We all make mistakes. And the F.D.A. has made plenty.
In February 2023, 20 state attorneys general issued letters against the mailing distribution of chemical abortion drugs — affirming it would violate the federal Comstock Act as well as many pro-life state laws.
“Federal law expressly prohibits using the mail to send or receive any drug that will ‘be used or applied for producing abortion,’” stated a letter from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey. “The text could not be clearer…[However] In December, the Biden administration’s Office of Legal Counsel encouraged the U.S. Postal Service to disregard this plain text. But the text, not the Biden administration’s view, is what governs. And the Biden administration’s opinion fails to stand up even to the slightest amount of scrutiny.”
Joining Attorney General Bailey with nearly identical letters were attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, and West Virginia.
The case is the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and the Supreme Court heard arguments that the FDA has threatened women’s health because of its removal of key safety standards in its approval of mifepristone, one of the abortion pill drugs. Four national medical associations, four doctors, and Alliance Defending Freedom sued the FDA for failing to follow its own protocol, allowing mifepristone to be used later in pregnancy and to be mailed to pregnant women without an in-person visit.
The case claims that the FDA should not have approved the drug for use in the abortion pill regimen in 2000 and that the agency has further put women in danger with other changes to the regimen in 2016 and beyond.
During the oral arguments, attorney Erin Hawley argued on behalf of a doctors’ group that treats women injured by the abortion pill and argues on their behalf.
She told the high court that an appeals could ruling banning mail-order abortions and restoring the FDA safety warnings should be upheld.
“The FDA’s own label for these drugs says that roughly one in 25 women who take them will end up in the emergency room,” said Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, who represents the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
“The lower court’s decision merely restored long-standing and crucial protections under which millions of women used abortion drugs,” Hawley said.
“FDA’s outsourcing of abortion drug harm to respondent doctors forces them to choose between helping a woman with a life-threatening condition and violating their conscience,” she added. “The agency’s removal of in-person doctor visits and consistent, ongoing care has subjected more women to suffering severe, even life-threatening, medical conditions.”
During the hearing a few justices suggested the pro-life doctors lack standing, or sufficient legal injury, to challenge the FDA rollback of the safety regulations. But Hawley said they have standing because they treat women injured by abortion pills.
“They can’t waste precious moments,” Hawley said. “These are emergency situations. Respondent doctors don’t necessarily know until they scrub into the operating room whether this may or may not be abortion drug harm.”
“The FDA acknowledges that women are even more likely to need surgical intervention and other medical care without an in-person visit,” she added.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett questioned the FDA’s lawyer, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar, on whether the FDA followed proper protocol when approving mifepriston and removing safety warnings.
Barrett expressed concern that ending the in-person requirement to see a doctor before taking the dangerous abortion drug could “lead to mistakes in gestational aging” because doctors would not be able to perform an ultrasound. She asked whether this “could increase the need for a [dilatation and curettage procedure or increase] the amount of bleeding.”
Alito questioned why the DFA did not study the negative effects more.
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, who write an amicus brief on the case, hopes the Supreme Court will uphold the lower court ruling.
She told LifeNews: “It is alarming that the Food and Drug Administration has placed politics above the health and safety of women and girls in the case of abortion drugs. The FDA, which is tasked with “ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security” of drugs has ignored science and common sense by removing every meaningful safeguard around mifepristone, including critical in-person medical oversight. Regardless of whether one is pro-choice or pro-life, we should all want to maximize the safety of pregnant women. And the FDA has a legal obligation to do so.”
SBA Pro-Life America’s State Policy Director Katie Daniel told LifeNews that the abortion pill often injures women.
“Even when used under the strongest safeguards, abortion drugs send roughly one in 25 women to the emergency room, according to the FDA’s own label. Yet under Democrat presidents, the FDA has illegally rolled back basic safety standards, like in-person doctor visits, even allowing these deadly drugs to be sent through the mail.
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She added, “The Supreme Court is set to hear a landmark case brought by doctors who routinely witness the fallout for women and girls who turn up in ERs with severe pain, heavy bleeding, infections and other serious complications – not to mention the trauma some experience when they deliver their own aborted child alone in the bathroom. The truth about abortion drugs is being exposed and we hope the FDA will finally be held accountable for failing to protect Americans.”
A leading OBGYN also underscored how abortion pills damage women’s health.
Ingrid Skop, M.D., F.A.C.O.G., a board-certified OB-GYN who serves as vice president and director of medical affairs at Charlotte Lozier Institute, shared her reaction:
“Pharmacists, who do not receive clinical training, should not be distributing these dangerous drugs. By pushing these medically unsupervised abortions, the FDA and abortion advocates continue down the slippery slope of chipping away at medical standards for women seeking abortion. This is not health care. This is an ideology that prioritizes destruction of unborn human life and does not care that the women injured by these abortions, whom I see in the ER on a regular basis, are collateral damage.”
Leading pro-life groups are hoping the nation’s highest court will step in and protect women where the FDA failed.
March for Life President Jeanne Mancini told LifeNews: “The FDA’s removal of nearly all safeguards around the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone has needlessly put women and girls at risk for suffering severe — even life-threatening — complications without the ongoing care of a medical provider. Despite the FDA’s own label showing that roughly 1 in 25 women end up in the emergency room after ingesting these pills, the agency does not require prescribers to report resultant medical emergencies like severe bleeding and sepsis. We hope the FDA will be held accountable for failing to meet its own standards when it comes to abortion drugs. Such reckless disregard for women’s health and safety is unacceptable from an agency tasked with protecting it.”
Priests for Life National Director Frank Pavone and Executive Director Janet Morana agreed.
“For three decades we have been complaining about the way in which the government has been cutting corners when it comes to this baby-killing drug,” Pavone said. “For the Supreme Court to consider whether the actions of the FDA have been based on politics rather than on science is long overdue, and we believe the case is pretty clear-cut.”
Morana, who also is co-founder of the Silent No More Awareness Campaign, said recent figures showing chemical abortion accounts for 63 percent of all abortions in the nation point to the fact that more women are at risk every day.
“Our abortion-friendly government stopped reporting any adverse effects women suffer from this drug because this administration simply does not care if women are harmed,” she said. “But we have heard from countless women that chemical abortion was not easy, or quick, or without consequences. This drug should be off the market, but failing that, it’s my hope the Court does all in its power to reduce the use of mifepristone.”
In-depth polling conducted by CRC Research for SBA Pro-Life America shows that Americans do not believe the FDA’s assertions that mail-order abortion drugs are safe. For more information about the dangers of abortion drugs, visit abortiondrugfacts.com.
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.
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.
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.
Another new study from the University of Toronto, “Short-Term Adverse Outcomes After Mifepristone–Misoprostol Versus Procedural Induced Abortion,” published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that one in ten women who took the abortion pill had to go to the emergency room, according to Pregnancy Help News.
A 19-year-old Canadian woman died along with her unborn baby after taking the abortion pill. The tragic news comes as abortion activists push to expand the abortion drug mifepristone across the U.S. and Canada, claiming it’s “safer than Tylenol.” In actuality, the drug has been linked to the deaths of millions of unborn babies and dozens of mothers.
Meanwhile, Alyona Dixon, 24, died on September 28, 2022 after complications from the abortion forced her to seek emergency medical treatment four days after the abortion at Planned Parenthood. Her family is now suing the Las Vegas hospital that treated her, saying it did not provide adequate medical care for the abortion complications.
At the Planned Parenthood abortion center, Dixon received the dangerous mifepristone abortion pill that has killed dozens of other women and injured thousands. The pill has been linked to sepsis, which has killed other women taking the abortion drug, including Dixon.
In England, which began allowing mail-order abortion drugs around the same time as the U.S., 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.
Coercion and abuse also are concerns. LifeNews has reported a number of stories in recent years about sex traffickers, abusive partners and parents forcing or tricking pregnant women and girls into aborting their unborn babies. A midwife with the abortion chain MSI Reproductive Health recently told the BBC that recognizing coercion is a big problem among abortion providers, and the new mail-order abortion practice makes it even worse.
