Yesterday, in a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court reinstated FDA regulations on the abortion pill, reversing a lower court’s decision to waive FDA regulations and allow mail-order abortions during COVID-19.
Last year, during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, abortion advocates demanded that FDA safety regulations on the abortion pill be suspended, arguing that they were unduly burdensome. The abortion pill regimen is regulated under the FDA’s Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy (REMS) protocol. Under this protocol, a chemical abortion cannot be obtained without a physical examination, and the first of the two pills must be taken in the presence of a physician. In July, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang accepted the abortion lobby’s demands and waived the FDA’s in-person requirement, disregarding the safety of women.
The abortion pill takes the life of an unborn child and does so in a way that is exceptionally dangerous to the child’s mother. Last year, a study found that the abortion pill is four times more dangerous than surgical abortion, and yet, the abortion industry downplays this fact. In the 20 years that it has been legal in the U.S., thousands of women have suffered from complications, and 24 women have died from the abortion pill regimen.
Waiving the in-person requirement only adds to the risks of the abortion pill. Without a medical examination, it cannot be verified that the gestational age of the baby is not more than 10 weeks or that the pregnancy is not ectopic, nor can the doctor verify whether the woman is Rh negative or positive. “In any of these cases,” reports Live Action News, “taking the abortion pill poses a potential health risk to the woman, including the possibility of future pregnancy loss, hysterectomy, and death.”
Yesterday the Supreme Court recognized that it is not the role of judges to toss out safety requirements put in place by the FDA. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that,
The question is… whether the District Court properly ordered the Food and Drug Administration to lift those established requirements because of the court’s own evaluation of the impact of the COVID–19 pandemic. Here as in related contexts concerning government responses to the pandemic, my view is that courts owe significant deference to the politically accountable entities with the “background, competence, and expertise to assess public health.”
FDA regulations exist for a reason and the courts have no business making politically motivated decisions to ignore the FDA’s warnings. A pandemic is not an excuse to recklessly expand chemical abortion and to disregard women’s safety.
The Supreme Court’s decision is great news for women and potentially life-saving to unborn babies as well. It is encouraging to see the Supreme Court acknowledge that the abortion industry does not get to demand that FDA safety standards be ignored. The abortion industry does not deserve special exemptions and should not be allowed to disregard the safety of women for profit.
