NEWS FEED // Senator James Lankford, R-OK, joined by 20 other Senators and 19 Members of the House, issued a letter warning the Department of Justice (DOJ) that its aggressive pro-abortion agenda is in violation of the U.S. Code of Law.
Late last year, the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) assured the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) that federal law does not prohibit sending abortion drugs by mail.
The OLC memorandum advised the USPS that “section 1461 does not prohibit the mailing, or delivery or receipt by mail, of mifepristone or misoprostol where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully.”
The new letter to the DOJ makes three demands:
- that the DOJ immediately rescind the statement that it is legal for the USPS to carry and deliver chemical abortion drugs;
- that the DOJ work swiftly to shut down “all mail-order abortion operations” and hold those complicit accountable;
- and that the DOJ “cease efforts to prevent States from regulating or prohibiting abortion drugs.”
The relevant law, 18 U.S. Code § 1461, classifies as “non mailable matter” every “article or thing designed, adapted, or intended for producing abortion,” as well as “[e]very article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion.”
The OLC memo states that “federal law does not prohibit the use of” either drug, which are both FDA approved for no other purpose than to kill and expel an unborn child from a mother.
As CatholicVote has reported, the FDA recently voiced concerns over the safety of abortion-by-mail for mothers as demand for chemical abortion pills surged following the Dobbs decision overturning Roe vs. Wade.
Senator Lankford’s letter charges the DOJ with abdicating its Constitutional responsibility to enforce U.S. law. “[T]he Biden administration’s DOJ has … twisted the plain meaning of the law in an effort to promote the taking of unborn life,” the letter states:
While the use of chemical abortion drugs may be legal in some States, and Federal law does not currently explicitly prohibit the use of such drugs, Federal law does prohibit the mailing or shipping of such items.
Contrary to the OLC’s memorandum, the members write, “Congress has never repealed these criminal statutes that prohibit the mailing of dangerous chemical abortion drugs nor modified them in a way that restricted them based on the sender’s intent or the recipient’s plans.”
Furthermore, “the reckless distribution of abortion drugs by mail or other carriers to pregnant mothers who have not been examined in-person by a physician is not only dangerous and unsafe, it is criminal.”
Tom McClusky, CatholicVote Director of Government Affairs, noted:
The FDA itself has acknowledged that abortion-by-mail is nothing more than the new back-alley abortion – putting it at odds with the Biden Administration which has pledged to expand tele-abortion into states with abortion restrictions. The DOJ’s irresponsible reinterpretation of the law is putting women at serious risk.
The letter concludes:
An OLC memo cannot rewrite the law, and the plain words of the law are clear. OLC has chosen to promote abortion rather than the law, and is dangerously misleading those who would rely on this memo into committing what the Federal law clearly proscribes as criminal activity. It is your Constitutional and moral responsibility to rescind the memo.
Read more >> “Chemical Abortions on the Rise post-Dobbs”
