CV NEWS FEED // A clinical pharmacist recently wrote an op-ed detailing “the dark history” of the chemical abortion pill mifepristone, and explained that mifepristone “isn’t a medication at all” because of its direct “intent to actively take life.”
Anthony Campagna wrote an op-ed for Crisis Magazine on March 14 titled, “The Bloody History of Mifepristone,” in which he highlighted the drug’s approval by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000 and where its availability stands today. Campagna has a Doctor of Pharmacy from Duquesne University and currently practices in Pennsylvania.
He wrote that it is important to recall the history of mifepristone in light of Walgreens and CVS’ recent announcement that they will prescribe the abortifacient over the counter and by mail.
The Supreme Court is also set to soon hear a case on mifepristone that will determine its availability to American citizens. The case is U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and oral arguments are set for March 26.
“In my work as a pharmacist, I am tasked with ensuring that medications are prescribed appropriately and that dosages are calculated correctly, all to maximize both efficacy and patient safety,” Campagna wrote:
How can either task be performed in the case of an abortifacient? There are two patients, not one, and mifepristone is a non-medication designed to do maximum harm to one of them.
Since its approval in 2000, “mifepristone has been responsible for the deaths of millions of unborn children,” Campagna wrote:
It is currently estimated that 930,000 abortions occur annually in the United States. With mifepristone currently accounting for nearly 53 percent of total abortions in the United States, the drug is responsible for close to a half million murdered children per year, and the number is growing.
The use of mifepristone “has been exploding over the past few years, and with the advent of telemedicine prescriptions and retail pharmacy dispensing, we can only expect those numbers to continue to climb as ease of access grows exponentially,” he added.
Mifepristone ‘Isn’t a Medication at All’
In a two-pill chemical abortion regime, mifepristone blocks progesterone, effectively starving and suffocating the unborn child to death, Campagna wrote. After taking mifepristone, “the mother experiences cramping and bleeding and the eventual expulsion of the aborted child from the birth canal. The drug misoprostol is then administered buccally, sublingually, or vaginally 24-48 hours later to further induce uterine contractions.”
Campagna highlighted that current legal challenges against mifepristone spotlight “legitimate and grave concerns about the safety of the drug for the women who take it, including serious and fatal infections and bleeding, to say nothing of the psychological damage that comes from killing your own child.”
He wrote that because of the “grave health concerns” mifepristone poses to women, “any attempt to facilitate casual access to the drug is wholly irresponsible from a patient safety perspective.”
>> Read: How Bad is Mifepristone For Women? <<
“The various oaths, duties, responsibilities, and moral obligations of healthcare professionals are aimed at improving the healthcare outcomes of patients,” Campagna wrote. As such, it is “morally repugnant” to pressure a pharmacist “to prescribe and dispense a drug intended to take the life of a child,” and a grave violation “of the healthcare worker’s sworn duties,” he argued.
He noted that describing mifepristone as a type of “medicine” is completely inaccurate. Mifepristone, “in the context of its use as an abortifacient, isn’t a medication at all,” he wrote, continuing, “the right to be called a medication is forfeited the second a drug is used… with the intent to actively take life.”
“We don’t call heroin a medication, nor do we award that title to mustard gas, or the lethal injection, for that matter,” he added.
Campagna stressed that although the abortifacients will become more widely available at retail drug pharmacies such as CVS and Walgreens, “We must not allow people to normalize the use of this drug, to allow it to lose its stigma as oral contraception and ‘the morning after pill’ have. Mifepristone’s name should evoke horror and deserves a place in the gutter.”
History of Mifepristone
Delving into how mifepristone became available in the United States, Campagna wrote that the abortifacient “was first developed in France in the 1980s, where it was approved for use in 1988,” and Sweden, the United Kingdom, and China followed suit shortly after.
Mifepristone was banned in the United States in 1989. This ban began to be lifted in “1993 when the Clinton Administration ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to begin investigating the drug for use in chemical abortions,” Campagna wrote.
The FDA approved mifepristone “in 2000 under the brand name Mifeprex ® for termination of pregnancy through seven weeks, which would be increased to 10 weeks in 2016. A generic product was ultimately approved in 2019,” Campagna wrote:
From 2000 until 2021, mifepristone was only available in clinics, medical offices, and hospitals. In April of 2021, the FDA began allowing mifepristone to be prescribed online and mailed to patients on a temporary basis, a change that was made permanent in the same year.
In 2023, the FDA began allowing pharmacies to go through a certification process to begin dispensing mifepristone from retail pharmacy locations.
The crucial Supreme Court case came into public focus shortly after this approval, Campagna continued.
“In August 2023, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to invalidate the FDA’s actions to loosen restrictions on the drug, a decision that was stayed by the Supreme Court until they hear arguments later this month,” he wrote:
The stay also blocked a decision by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to suspend mifepristone’s approval. The Supreme Court’s ruling, expected by June, will affect whether restrictions dating back to 2016 are reinstated on the drug—but not whether the drug’s approval is revoked.
Campagna called for all to pray for an end to abortion, especially asking for the Holy Innocents’ intercession. In the Catholic Church, the Holy Innocents are the many infant boys under two years old who King Herod ordered to be murdered, in Herod’s attempt to kill the infant child Jesus.
“The souls of the modern-day Holy Innocents whose lives have been taken by the drug cry out to us,” he concluded:
Their blood is on the hands of millions of Americans. We must come together and examine mifepristone’s bloody past to ensure that it has no future.
