“The Trump Administration prioritized women’s safety today in petitioning the Supreme Court to allow health and safety standards set by the FDA for chemical abortion pills to stand while a case from the ACLU is pending,” said SFLA’s Kristan Hawkins. “Making it easy for abortionists to hand out deadly pills helps them make money but does nothing for the women whose very lives are at stake. If ensuring patient safety is too much work, then abortionists should just stop selling the pills at all.”
WASHINGTON D.C. (08-26-2020) – Following news that the Trump Administration has filed a petition with the Supreme Court calling for health and safety from the FDA to stay in place for chemical abortion pills, Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins made the following statement: “We shouldn’t have to go to court to defend health and safety standards endorsed by the FDA so that women won’t die or be harmed by chemical abortion pills, but here we are again in court, thanks in part to the ACLU. The Trump Administration’s proactive petition represents just what Pro-Life Americans expect from their government – a commitment to mothers and their children, born and preborn.”
In their petition, the Administration asserted: “The FDA has made, and continuously adhered to, the judgment that these requirements mitigate serious health risks associated with the drugs, which can increase if the patient delays taking the drug or fails to receive proper counseling about possible complications.”
Yet, a single judge blocked the health and safety standards, with the stroke of a pen, impacting the nation.
The petition notes: “The circumstance here – in which a single district court, presented with a suit by a single physician and a handful of organizations, displaced the FDA’s scientific judgment with respect to every medication provider in the country – illustrate the problems with allowing district courts to award relief untethered to the established injuries of the specific plaintiffs before them.”
The Trump administration asked that the health and safety standards remain in place as the case proceeds.
Last month, Hawkins praised the FDA for fighting back against abortion industry aggressors, attempting to sell pills without verifying a pregnancy or risk factors for the drug’s use, including examination for ectopic pregnancy, late-term pregnancy and blood type as Rh negative women can become infertile depending on whether they receive immediate care.
At that time Hawkins observed: “The FDA was eloquent in breaking down the abortion industry arguments in favor of putting women at risk by getting rid of an in-person visit. Using a pandemic as justification for expanding a business that endanger lives is the worst kind of predatory profiteering, but it’s exactly what we’ve come to expect from abortion sales teams.”
In their appeal, posted here, the FDA noted: “Defendants will also suffer irreparable harm in the absence of a stay because they will be unable to enforce requirements that FDA has determined, based on its experience and scientific expertise, are necessary to ensure safe use of Mifeprex … Requiring patients to obtain Mifeprex at a clinic—as has been required for years—does not deprive women of the ‘ability to make a decision to have an abortion.’”
And the FDA argued that the judge in the case was not accurate in saying that the in-person visit’s purpose was to track complications, something that such a visit could not accomplish.
They noted: “The purpose of the in-person dispensing requirement, however, is not to monitor patients for complications, but rather to ensure that: (1) at the time of dispensing, the patient has the opportunity to receive counseling about the risk of serious complications associated with Mifeprex and what to do should they arise; and (2) there is no delay in the patient receiving their Mifeprex prescription, which could increase the risks of serious bleeding or infection.”
The FDA further argued that the abortion industry did not have the “standing” (the legal right) to file a lawsuit on behalf of women, claiming a “close relationship” because their entire business model was about not having any close ties. The FDA observed, “(I)n fact, the entire point of this suit is to reduce Plaintiffs’ relationship with their patients—and failed to show that their patients were hindered from vindicating their own rights.”
Today about 40% of all abortions committed, chemical abortion represents the abortion industry’s plan for early abortion with 4 times the complications of surgical abortions, among many risks. Learn more here.
For more on the realities of chemical abortion and Students for Life’s action plans to confront it, visit: https://www.thisischemicalabortion.com
For questions or an interview, please contact Kristi Hamrick at khamrick@studentsforlife.org.
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Students for Life of America (SFLA) is the nation’s largest, pro-life, youth organization. Headquartered in Fredericksburg, VA, SFLA serves more than 1,240 groups on college and university, middle and high school, medical and law school campuses in all 50 states. Student pro-life organizations work to confront policies on their campuses to support pregnant and parenting students, to end Planned Parenthood’s relationships with schools and communities, and to change minds of their peers about abortion. SFLA has more conversations with those most targeted by the abortion industry every day, week, and year than any other pro-life outreach in the world and mobilizes the Pro-Life Generation to confront abortion at the local, state and national levels daily. Every week, Students for Life entities reach more than 2 million people across social media platforms to have nearly 200,000 digital conversations with the most engaged pro-life online audience in the world.
