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CatholicVote joined a coalition of pro-life organizations in a letter calling on Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary to protect women from the risks associated with the abortion drug mifepristone and reinstate safety restrictions that were loosened under the Biden administration.
“The recent revelation of commercial insurance data from 865,727 prescribed chemical abortions between 2017 and 2023 showing 94,605 women suffered serious adverse events indicates that more than one out of ten women are put at risk by mifepristone,” stated a letter signed by 114 organizations, including CatholicVote. “This real-world rate is twenty-two times greater than the rate claimed by the FDA.”
The letter went on to note the “clear” danger the drug poses to women and girls.
“Nearly 11% of women taking mifepristone experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhage, or another serious adverse event within 45 days of taking the drug,” the coalition pointed out.
Despite those warning signs, the FDA under Democratic Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden
- Removed the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) requirements to report these serious consequences
- Removed protections like requiring a provider to meet with a woman in person before prescribing the drug to rule out dangerous conditions like ectopic pregnancies, and
- Removed requirements for the provider to follow up with a woman in person to check on her condition after she ingests mifepristone. It even removed the requirement that a doctor be involved at any stage in the chemical abortion process.
Appealing to the FDA’s stated mission to protect public health by ensuring the safety of drugs and keeping Americans informed about scientific research pertaining to health, the coalition warned that the purpose of the agency has “been undermined by political whims that obscured the growing evidence of mifepristone’s harm.”
“We encourage the Administration and FDA to put the safety of women first and take a serious look at the data showing chemical abortion is neither safe nor effective,” the letter concluded. “To start, the FDA should reinstate the previous protections for women prescribed mifepristone. The evidence strongly suggests that mifepristone is unacceptably dangerous, and those who removed such protections put American women directly in harm’s way.”
Shortly after the coalition’s letter was sent to the heads of the FDA and HHS, six medical organizations sent their own letter to the nation’s top health officials.
The medical groups, which represent about 30,000 healthcare professionals, explained that data show mifepristone is a “high-risk abortion-inducing drug that is known to cause serious adverse effects and medical emergencies, including hemorrhage, sepsis, and incomplete abortions requiring surgical intervention.”
The groups explained that, once the pro-abortion Biden administration assumed power after the 2020 election, it began “fast-tracking the approval process” of mifepristone.
Since then, “safeguards have been progressively dismantled to the point where women are now receiving these drugs with little to no medical consultation beforehand and without any meaningful follow up care afterwards,” the medical professionals asserted. “This has a significant public health impact as at least 63% of all abortions are now drug-induced.”
The coalition — which includes the American Association of Pro-Life OB/GYNs (AAPLOG), the Christian Medical and Dental Associations (CMDA), the American College of Family Medicine (ACFM), and Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), and the Coptic Medical Association of North America (CMANA) — cited two recent reports that highlight the dangers of mifepristone.
Kelsey Reinhardt, president of CatholicVote.org, noted the broad approvals for mifepristone despite the recent data.
“The recent findings from the American College of Pediatricians and affiliated medical professionals confirm what many have known for years: the culture of abortion isn’t just morally wrong — it’s systematically sick,” Reinhardt said Tuesday.
“When over 11% of women and girls who take mifepristone face the risk of hemorrhage, sepsis, or infection, we have to ask how the abortion lobby was granted permission to endanger the lives of women and girls alongside their unborn children,” she said. “The answer is simple: abortion was given an exception — an exemption from the safety standards required of every other drug in this country.”
In their letter to Kennedy and Makary, the medical groups call upon the FDA to:
- Reinstate the reporting of ALL adverse events associated with the use of mifepristone
- Reinstate the pre-2016 Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) — including restricting the use of the drug to seven weeks gestation and requiring both in-person dispensing and follow-up
- Require ultrasounds to confirm gestational age and to rule out ectopic pregnancy
- Request that the FDA conduct its own evaluation of real-world data to determine the overall safety of mifepristone in both the adult and adolescent populations.
To demonstrate how easy it is to obtain abortion-inducing pills online, former Planned Parenthood director-turned pro-life activist Abby Johnson published a video last week of how she was able to successfully complete an application to obtain the drugs, even without providing any identifying information, including age, to a medical professional prior to providing her shipping address.
“The abortion pill has turned homes, bathrooms, and bedrooms into abortion clinics,” Johnson told CatholicVote. “Women are alone, in pain, and suffering the effects of drugs that no one has honestly disclosed the side effects of. Anyone of any age, including predators, can get abortion pills, for free online — without ever talking to a doctor — and ingest drugs that cannot only end innocent lives of babies but also cause irreparable harm to women.”
Dr. Jane Orient, executive director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, also emphasized that “mifepristone is a very dangerous drug.”
“Any drug that can cause hemorrhage and sepsis needs to be prescribed by a physician who is competent to handle the complications and to assure proper informed consent,” Orient told CatholicVote. “Too often it is taken by terrified women who are alone in a hotel room suffering intense pain and heavy bleeding.”
Reinhardt urged that, at the very least, strict safety guidelines for access to abortion-inducing drugs be restored as federal health officials promote a healthier America.
“We urge Secretary Kennedy and Dr. Marty Makary to ‘follow the science’ and at a minimum, reinstate safety guards on the abortion pill mifepristone that the Biden administration recently removed,” she said. “If we’re serious about making America healthy again, we cannot allow basic safety standards to be removed because of political ideology.”
