It’s been a momentous week in the relationship between
@US_FDA and the pro-life movement: first a leadership change at the agency, then a Supreme Court order on the FDA’s authorization of mail-order abortion.
There’s a simple way the administration can hit the “reset” button on this relationship—while ridding America of a central plank of the Biden agenda once and for all.
I humbly invite the new FDA leadership to resolve our lawsuit on mail-order abortion.
Last year, Louisiana
@AGLizMurrill and
@ADFLegal sued the FDA over its abortion-by-mail scheme. Under President Biden, the FDA decided that these high-risk drugs—which according to the FDA’s own label send roughly 1 in 25 women to the E.R.—could be dispensed remotely, without seeing a doctor. This was done for the express purpose of nullifying Dobbs and flooding pro-life states with illegal abortion drugs.
Sadly, that plan worked. Every month, this reckless scheme takes thousands of unborn lives in pro-life states.
But it’s also been catastrophic for women's safety. Both HHS
@SecKennedy and then-Commissioner Makary have agreed that the Biden FDA’s action “lack[ed] adequate consideration” of the safety risks. A recent Fifth Circuit ruling pointed out that “FDA conceded it had failed to adequately study whether remotely prescribing mifepristone is safe.”
These lax standards are also a gift to abusive men, who can now easily obtain these drugs and force them on unwilling or unsuspecting women. That’s why our lawsuit includes plaintiff Rosalie Markezich, a Louisiana woman who lost her baby when her boyfriend coerced her to take abortion drugs he’d ordered from California. The Wall Street Journal recently detailed several similar, chilling incidents in a piece titled “Mifepristone as a Tool of Coercion.”
Once people understand the risks of mail-order abortion—and the fact that it was motivated by politics, not science—the FDA’s approval of it becomes hard to defend. The Trump FDA has not done so. Nor did it join abortion drugmakers in asking the Supreme Court to restore mail-order abortion last week.
Perhaps the time is right to reconsider why we’re facing off against each other in court at all.
While yesterday’s SCOTUS emergency order was disappointing, it says nothing about the merits of the case. It’s notable that all seven Fifth Circuit judges who have addressed the merits of our arguments have found that we are likely to win. And the case is moving forward. We are confident it’s a strong one.
We invite the FDA to help us send the Biden legacy to the ash heap of history, restoring a crucial safeguard that was in place during the first Trump administration.
Women deserve real health care. Babies deserve life. Pro-life states deserve to enforce their laws. The Trump admin should be our allies in this. Let’s talk.