The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday challenging a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule that requires women to have an in-person clinic visit in order to obtain drugs to induce an abortion.
The ACLU filed the lawsuit in Maryland on behalf of the leftwing American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, which claim the FDA rule that requires women to first have an in-person visit with the abortion provider is a “burdensome barrier.”
The FDA regulates 20,000+ drugs. But it uniquely restricts one abortion-inducing drug – and it won’t lift those restrictions in a pandemic. So the ACLU is suing. My @vicenews latest:👇 https://t.co/uhxfhPrFBM
— Carter Sherman (@carter_sherman) May 27, 2020
According to the organization, their complaint states, “Of the more than 20,000 drugs regulated by the FDA, mifepristone is the only one that patients must receive in person at a hospital, clinic, or medical office, yet may self-administer, unsupervised, at a location of their choosing.”
ACOG says the FDA rules have “no medical basis” and “unnecessarily restrict access to care.”
FDA’s medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone threatens to harm patients & their clinicians during a national crisis. It undermines the health care community's efforts to identify safe, effective ways to provide patients with the care they need. https://t.co/utC37UorOx pic.twitter.com/baQ1sRdkCE
— ACOG Action (@ACOGAction) May 27, 2020
The organization adds the rules are “especially harmful” during the coronavirus pandemic because “forcing physicians to dispense this drug in person puts patients at increased risk of COVID-19.”
Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers, however, have refused to stop providing elective surgical abortions in their clinics, claiming these are “essential” services, even as scarce personal protective equipment (PPE) has been needed by healthcare workers directly providing care to patients with the infection caused by the Chinese virus.
“Like any lawyers, the ACLU pushes for their clients’ financial interests in a lawsuit designed to force the FDA to help abortion vendors make a quick buck,” Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins said in a statement sent to Breitbart News.
“The FDA must hold the line on the health and safety standards in place that are meant to help women survive taking chemical abortion pills,” she added. “Using this COVID-19 crisis to force the sales of life-ending drugs in ways that risk women’s lives should embarrass the abortion industry. But perhaps that is asking too much of people who end life for a living.”
In addition to claiming elective surgical abortions are “essential” for women’s health, industry giant Planned Parenthood announced during the pandemic its new tele-abortion service is now available in all 50 states.
Acting CEO of Planned Parenthood Alexis McGill Johnson called her new tele-abortion service the “silver lining” of the coronavirus crisis.
Planned Parenthood has been touting an increase in at-home abortions since its tele-abortion services began nationwide, though many physicians and pro-life advocates express concerns about the practice.
Specifically, women are obtaining mifepristone illegally from other countries since it is not approved under the FDA Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS).
In early May, national pro-life leaders sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Dr. Stephen Hahn, urging him to take action to block the illegal Internet sale of abortion-inducing drugs that are produced overseas and then shipped to the United States.
In a press release, the leaders observed that, under REMS, the drug “cannot legally be sold in pharmacies or online due to the risk of serious complications.”
However, websites such as AidAccess and Rablon sell and distribute the drugs regularly.
“This is a medication that definitely has dangers associated with it,” Dr. Christina Francis, an Indiana-based OB/GYN and chairman of the board of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), told EWTN Pro-Life Weekly recently.
Francis said some immediate complications of mifepristone could be “hemorrhage, the immediate possibility of infection, and the possibility of failure, where the pregnancy doesn’t fully pass from the medication and then leading to sometimes the requirement for emergent surgery for that woman because of either ongoing bleeding or the risk of infection.”
Francis added that because of the uncertainties associated with the pandemic, many women “are being influenced by fear right now, and this is being perpetuated by the abortion industry.”
One Planned Parenthood official in New York state touted that the organization’s new tele-abortion service is so much in demand that one mother began her drug-induced abortion “at home with her children running around behind her.”
Dr. Meera Shah, chief medical officer of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic, told the Associated Press (AP), “We provided a medication abortion to an EMT while she was sitting in her ambulance. We provided abortion care to a mother who was at home with her children running around behind her.”
Former abortionist Dr. Anthony Levatino explained in his videos about various abortion procedures that mifepristone blocks the action of progesterone, which the mother’s body produces to nourish the pregnancy. When progesterone is blocked, the lining of the mother’s uterus deteriorates, and blood and nourishment are cut off to the developing baby, who then dies inside the mother’s womb.
The drug misoprostol (also called Cytotec) then causes contractions and bleeding to expel the baby from the mother’s uterus.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins wrote that, as a result of Planned Parenthood’s tele-abortion service, more women will have at-home “chemically-induced procedures that carry significant risks”:
They tell women that it’ll be simple, natural, safe, and private process. They’ll recover in a day, maybe two. What they don’t tell them is that they might deliver a tiny, perfectly-formed child. Or that they’ll experience labor pains, heavy bleeding, vomiting, or lose consciousness. They don’t talk about the depression, anger, anxiety, panic attacks, and substance abuse that follow. Or the weeks to months of recovery time, usually managed alone.
“This is Planned Parenthood’s ‘silver lining,’” Perkins said. “Babies who don’t have a chance at life, women who are haunted and harmed.”
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