Three pro-life states have asked a federal court to protect women — and teenage girls — from the potentially deadly effects of the abortion pill, overturning years of “dangerous” executive actions imposed by the Obama and Biden-Harris administrations.
The states of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho have sued the administration to reinstate the original protocols the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enacted when it approved the abortion pill, mifepristone, in 2000, rolling back a decade of deregulation of chemical abortion that they contend has hurt or killed women. The lawsuit names the FDA, the Department of Health and Human Services, and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra.
“Women face severe, even life-threatening, harm because the federal government has disregarded their health and safety,” says the states’ 199-page legal brief.
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The Clinton administration’s FDA originally approved mifepristone (known at the time as RU-486) for only the first seven weeks of pregnancy; mandated that medical personnel must dispense the two-drug chemical abortion cocktail in-person; and required three in-person visits (to confirm pregnancy, to administer the drug, and to assure the mother’s health after dispensing it). The abortion industry largely ignored legal norms and dispensed the drug far later. The Obama administration unilaterally legalized their practice by extending the date to 10 weeks, reduced the in-person visits to one, and eliminated reporting of all adverse effects except death. The Biden-Harris administration removed all in-person visits and allowed pharmacies to dispense the life-taking drugs.
The states contend this puts women’s and girls’ health at risk.
“Abortion drugs are dangerous — the FDA’s own label says that an estimated roughly one in 25 women who take abortion drugs will visit the emergency room,” it states. “[T]he FDA has failed in this responsibility by removing many of the safety standards it once provided to women using abortion drugs. … These dangerous drugs are now flooding states like Missouri and Idaho and sending women in these States to the emergency room.”
The parties filed the lawsuit with U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Texas. Last April, Judge Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of a previous lawsuit contending that the FDA illegally expedited its approval of the abortion pill, mifepristone, at the end of the Clinton administration in 2000. The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld much of his decision, but the U.S. Supreme Court later ruled the pro-life physicians who filed suit lacked standing to sue the FDA. Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the pro-life First Liberty Institute before his appointment to the court by President Donald Trump.
The laxer chemical abortion procedure also endangers teenage girls, contends the lawsuit filed by Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach (R), Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R), and Idaho Attorney General Rau?l Labrador (R). “In 2016, the agency also ignored the potential impacts that the removal of commonsense safeguards would have on adolescent girls, a violation of the Pediatric Research and Equity Act (PREA). It improperly relied on extrapolation in lieu of any safety assessment of the new regimen’s safety and effectiveness on pediatric populations,” says the lawsuit.
“And the FDA needed to classify pregnancy as a ‘disease’ to avoid such a safety assessment. But pregnancy is not a disease,” states the complaint. The focus on adolescent health sets it apart from the previous Supreme Court case.
The action has won praise from the pro-life movement. The “American Life League applauds the attorney generals of Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho for filling a suit against the FDA for its recklessness in allowing the deadly abortion pill regimen to be sent through the mail,” Katie Brown, national director of the American Life League (ALL), told The Washington Stand.
She continued, “We are hopeful that this lawsuit will put a stop to the deadly abortion pill drug cartel, which illegally traffics these unregulated drugs across our border, into states with abortion restrictions. Thanks to the FDA, we have no idea of how many women and babies have paid the ultimate price due to unfettered access to chemical abortion. The cases that we do know about are heartbreaking, and only scratch the surface of the demonic attempt to make these pills so accessible. It is our hope and prayer that this suit will expose the abortion pill for what it is, a barbaric practice that takes an innocent life every single time.”
ALL issued a report titled “Beneath the Surface: Exposing the Abortion Pill Drug Cartel,” which argued the abortion “pill network is modeled after the drug cartel, creating an abortion pill crisis similar to our nation’s narcotics crisis.”
“Every state in America should sue the FDA, along with Planned Parenthood, the facilitator and referral agent, and hold them accountable,” ALL Vice President Hugh Brown told TWS. “Shut these murderers down.”
LifeNews Note: Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.
