FDA Lifts Restrictions on Abortion Pills by Mail, Expert Warns They Have Dangerous Complications with a Death Toll
The Biden administration is citing the pandemic as an excuse to bypass the regulations that stopped the distribution of abortion pills by mail.
The move reverses a Trump administration policy that had been backed by the U.S. Supreme Court in January. The court upheld the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) rule requiring in-person patient visits for abortions, even during the pandemic.
Politico.com reports acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock informed the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in a letter Monday that her agency concluded that allowing patients to receive the pills via telemedicine and through the mail will not increase risks and will keep people safe from contracting the virus.
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Woodcock's action only covers the current public health emergency. There's no word on how the FDA would bypass the existing regulations once the pandemic is over.
As CBN News has reported, at-home abortions are becoming a big topic for debate among state lawmakers across the U.S. Roughly 40% of all abortions in the country are now done through drugs rather than surgery, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only made them more central to the pro-choice crowd.
Meanwhile, pro-life advocates cite concerns about the safety of at-home abortions as the method becomes increasingly prevalent. So they're pushing legislation in several Republican-led states to restrict it and, in some cases, ban providers from prescribing powerful abortion drugs like RU-486 via telemedicine.
Melanie Israel, a research associate for the DeVos Center at The Heritage Foundation recently wrote a review of chemical abortions.
Israel's key takeaways from her study of the abortion pill, which she calls a "dangerous drug," include:
- Chemical abortion poses serious health risks to women and has a complication rate four times higher than that of surgical abortion. The farther along a woman is in her pregnancy, the more likely she is to experience complications.
- The abortion lobby downplays the risks of chemical abortion. But the facts are clear; in the United States, 24 women have died following a chemical abortion.
- The FDA has documented thousands of cases of adverse events—including serious complications such as hemorrhage, ruptured ectopic pregnancies, and sepsis.
"With the Biden administration once again falling in line to do the bidding of the abortion lobby, it's clear that policymakers, particularly at the state level, will have the burden of protecting women from dangerous abortion pills," she writes.
You can read Israel's full report here.
