News

Categories

Hearing Today on Highest Profile Abortion Case Since Dobbs v. Jackson

The most high profile abortion case since Dobbs v. Jackson is slated to be heard today by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk. The case focuses on a lawsuit from the Alliance of Hippocratic Medicine against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for their widespread approval of the abortion-inducing drug Mifepristone. Medication abortion accounts for the majority of abortions that occur nationwide each year.

Chemical abortions (or medication abortion) utilize the deadly RU-496 regimen of Mifeprex (mifepristone), which weakens or kills the baby through starvation. Then, a second drug, Misoprostol, is taken to induce early labor for the deceased unborn child. Yet, in January, CVS and Walgreens announced they planed to offer the abortion pill in states where abortion is legal under the new FDA regulation. Walgreens later back tracked and said they wouldn’t dispense the medication in 20 states.

According to Alliance Defending Freedom, many pro-life organizations, 67 members of Congress and 23 states support the lawsuit against the FDA. ADF Senior Counsel Erik Baptist said the following about the pending case: “The FDA’s approval of chemical abortion drugs has always stood on shaky legal and moral ground, and after years of evading responsibility, it’s time for the government to do what it’s legally required to do: protect the health and safety of vulnerable women and girls.

They added, “We and the many parties who are supporting the national medical associations and doctors hope the court will agree the FDA never had the authority to approve these dangerous drugs and reject the marketing and distribution of them.”

The pro-life arm of  Susan B. Anthony List, the Charlotte Lozier Institute, also said the following about the FDA in a brief to the court: “The FDA’s new regulations now allow women to self-manage their chemical abortions without ever seeing a doctor in person. Yet the consequences of telemedicine chemical abortion are almost too numerous to count—lack of necessary ultrasounds to confirm gestational age and rule out ectopic pregnancy, inability to confirm that a woman is not being coerced to obtain an abortion, abandonment of women to deal with the medical and psychological repercussions of abortion by herself with no follow-up, and grave harm to physicians who are expected to clean up the mess (in the ER and elsewhere) of self-managed abortion.”