The hypocrisy of abortion rights activists never ceases to amaze me. They want it both ways when it comes to the law regarding anything having to do with abortion.
Abortion is just a “medical procedure,” right? If that’s true, why not require abortions be performed in hospitals by a qualified surgeon under antiseptic conditions? A kid who needs his tonsils removed has to go into a hospital to have the procedure done. Instead, anyone who has a medical degree, hangs a shingle outside a door, and calls himself a “doctor” can perform an abortion. And it’s rarely done in a hospital.
And when it comes to the abortion pill mifepristone, activists have been wanting to make it over the counter. The FDA didn’t go that far, but it allowed the drug to be dispensed without a doctor’s visit, And during the pandemic, the FDA allowed mifepristone to be sent via the U.S. mail.
This isn’t aspirin the FDA is allowing women to take without a visit to a doctor. The National Library of Medicine warns, “Serious or life-threatening vaginal bleeding may occur when a pregnancy is ended by miscarriage or by medical or surgical abortion.” And, “Serious or life-threatening infections may occur when a pregnancy is ended by miscarriage or by medical or surgical abortion.”
The FDA made a political decision to allow women access to the drug without a doctor’s in-person approval. And now an appeals court has slapped the FDA down.
A ruling by the New Orleans-based Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has given opponents of mifepristone the opportunity to take their case of banning the abortion drug to the Supreme Court .
The appeals panel said pill opponents who sued the FDA had likely waited too long to challenge the drug’s original approval in 2000, and it also left in place the agency’s 2019 approval of the generic version of the pill. But the court said the FDA failed to properly scrutinize changes that eased access to mifepristone in recent years, such as allowing the drug to be administered without an in-person visit with a medical provider.
In expanding access to the drug, the FDA inadequately weighed whether the changes would make taking the drug riskier and neglected to follow up by collecting detailed data on the prevalence of serious complications, the judges said.
“FDA failed to account for the fact that it was about to significantly loosen mifepristone’s conditions for use. At no point during the decision did the agency acknowledge that the 2016 Amendments might alter the risk profile,” wrote Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, an appointee of George W. Bush.
Related: The Top Three Issues of 2024 (And Yes, Abortion Is a Big One)
In April, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk suspended the approval of mifepristone, though it never took effect.
Previously, a different Fifth Circuit three-judge panel issued an interim order that narrowed Kacsmaryk’s ruling somewhat, while still returning restrictions on the drug to what they were before 2016. Back then, the pill could be used only through about seven weeks of pregnancy, required three in-person doctor visits and couldn’t be sent to patients through the mail. Wednesday’s ruling puts in place a similar set of restrictions.
A Gallup poll last April found 63% of Americans favor keeping mifepristone on the market, including 41% of Republicans and 86% of Democrats.
The Supreme Court could refuse to hear the case, thus keeping the restrictions in place. Or it could hear the appeal and open a can of worms that some justices may just as soon want to avoid. Revisiting the decision to offer mifepristone as a prescription drug could open the floodgates to relitigating the approval of dozens of drugs. That way lies madness. and most of the justices might have trouble finding a compelling reason to take those cases on.
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