The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently announced that the prescription of certain drugs will require an in-person doctor’s visit instead of a telehealth appointment, but left the chemical abortion-inducing drug mifepristone off the list.
The Biden administration requested the move after the pandemic allowed three years of prescriptions made over telehealth visits. The new restrictions include powerful drugs like Xanax and OxyContin.
FDA Minimizes Risks
Several pro-life organizations expressed outrage over the administration’s decision to not classify mifepristone as one of these drugs requiring extra layers of caution in prescribing.
The Susan B. Anthony list tweeted about the decision: “Hey @US_FDA – You left abortion drugs off this list. Shouldn’t a pill that can cause hemorrhaging, need for follow-up surgery and even death require an in-person doctor visit?”
Likewise, National Right to Life mentioned on Twitter that, “The FDA does not require mifepristone’s adverse events to be reported — unless the woman dies. The deaths of 28 women have been connected to the use of the abortion pill in the U.S.”
Mifepristone is one of two drugs used in chemical abortion and, according to Planned Parenthood, it operates by blocking the hormone progesterone from reaching the woman’s uterus, which in turn breaks down the lining of the uterine wall and kills the child.
CatholicVote reported that between 2000 and 2009 the FDA acquired 6,158 pages of reports of women having adverse reactions to mifepristone used in a chemical abortion. Additionally, 20 deaths were reported as well as 529 “life-threatening” instances.
“This is utter hypocrisy by the FDA,” said CatholicVote’s Director of Government Affairs Tom McClusky. “They have on record exact proof of how harmful chemical abortion has been for women – not to mention that the drug’s primary function is to kill children – yet they are willing to ignore the facts to continue to enable the delusion that abortion is best for women.”
The FDA has several restrictions in place for the distribution of mifepristone, but has made recent moves to loosen those restrictions, such as by certifying pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens to fill out mifepristone prescriptions both over the counter and by mail.
Leftist Claims
Abortion advocates continue to make the claim that chemical abortion is safe and should not be subject to strict regulation.
A recent Slate article claims that, “mifepristone has become one of the most studied drugs available and has proven to have an impeccable safety profile—many times safer than common drugs like penicillin or Viagra.”
Similarly, 12 Democratic Attorneys General recently sued the FDA to drop any remaining restrictions on chemical abortion, claiming that mifepristone is “safer than many other common drugs FDA regulates, such as Viagra and Tylenol.”
In 2022, the FDA had expressed concerns over the increase in mailed chemical abortion pills following Roe v. Wade’s reversal, including to non-pregnant women. The FDA told POLITICO that mifepristone should not be prescribed without a doctor’s supervision because, “a medical professional may not be able to assess if a pregnancy is intrauterine or ectopic or date pregnancies properly.”
Two studies have found that women who undergo chemical abortions have four times the risk of developing complications than with surgical abortions.
In addition, women who have taken mifepristone while experiencing an unknown ectopic pregnancy are 30% more likely to die than women with ectopic pregnancies who did not attempt an abortion.
