Leah covered Friday how Trump-appointed federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk suspended the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone, also known as the “abortion pill.” Taken with misoprostol, mifepristone works as a medication abortion, which accounts for the majority of U.S. abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
"The Court does not second-guess FDA's decision-making lightly. But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions," Kacsmarky wrote in his decision. "There is also evidence indicating FDA faced significant political pressure to forego its proposed safety precautions to better advance the political objective of increased 'access; to chemical abortion — which was the 'whole idea of mifepristone.'"
This ruling comes in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, which struck down Roe v. Wade last summer and sent the issue of abortion back to the states. It was anticipated that medication abortion pills would become the next battleground in the abortion issue, with Democratic governors stockpiling abortion pills ahead of the ruling, which Townhall covered. The option of mail-order abortion pills also became prevalent, where a woman could obtain the drugs without ever seeing a physician in-person.
Recent polling conducted by CRC Research for Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America found that 51 percent of Americans disagree that the abortion pill was vetted carefully enough to protect women’s health and safety.
When respondents were informed that the FDA tracks no side effects of the abortion pill other than death, 62 percent felt not very confident (26 percent) or not at all confident (35 percent) that the pill is “safe.” And, 61 percent disagree that it is safe to distribute the pill in the mail with little to no supervision.
“The majority of Americans understand that the abortion pill is dangerous and they see through the abortion lobby’s lies,” SBA President Majorie Dannenfelser said of the results. “Common sense tells us that sending these drugs through the mail unsupervised puts women at risk, and that adolescent girls are at an especially vulnerable stage in their development. Under every Democratic administration, the FDA has undermined its own credibility by putting politics before patients.”
Dannenfelser added that in the aftermath of Dobbs, the abortion lobby “has relied on abortion pills as a backstop as more than a dozen states have enacted strong protections for unborn babies and mothers.”
In the poll, 56 percent of respondents said they consider the FDA to be “untrustworthy” (31 percent who claim it is “very untrustworthy”) when they learn that the agency fast-tracked the abortion pill regimen using it’s accelerated drug approval authority by calling pregnancy a “life threatening illness.” In addition, 75 percent of respondents agreed (52 percent strongly agreed) that the FDA should have performed studies focused on girls under the age of 18 before approving abortion pills for minors.
“For decades, the FDA has abdicated its solemn duty to protect women and girls, putting politics above health and safety. The agency’s reckless decision to allow the distribution of mail-order abortion pills without any in-person medical supervision, as well as its failure to study whether this powerful hormone-blocking drug regimen could harm the development of adolescent girls, reveals that pro-abortion ideology not science is its guiding principle,” CatholicVote President Brian Burch told Townhall in a statement. “Many peer reviewed studies and major international studies have documented the grave dangers involved in taking these drugs. It is time to hold the FDA accountable for ignoring the overwhelming body of evidence, and require them to do what is in the best interest of women and girls across the country."
March for Life President Jeanne Mancini called the decision “a major step forward for women and girls whose health and safety have been jeopardized for decades by the FDA’s rushed, flawed and politicized approval of these dangerous drugs.”
“Major international studies show chemical abortion carries four times the risk for many severe, even life-threatening, complications as compared to surgical abortion. This action by the court will save lives and ensure that the health and safety of women and girls is not compromised for the sake of advancing a pro-abortion political agenda,” she added.
Last year, a separate poll from Marist and the Knights of Columbus found that 63 percent of Americans oppose “federal rules that allow sending prescription drugs for medication abortions through the mail instead of having women get them in-person from a specially certified health provider.”
Following Kacsmaryk’s 67-page ruling, Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Republicans like Rep. Nancy Mace (SC) spoke out against the decision and urged the FDA to ignore the ruling.
