More than 90 members of Congress have written to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn, urging him to classify the abortion drug Mifeprex (mifepristone) as a “hazard” or “threat of danger” in order to have it removed from the U.S. market.
In the Senate, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) led 20 of his colleagues, while Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA) organized 72 members of the House in their respective letters to Hahn.
The letters called for a “serious examination of the ethical practices and FDA compliance” regarding clinical trials such as the TelAbortion project by Gynuity, a research group with ties to Planned Parenthood.
The lawmakers continued:
Gynuity’s direct-to-consumer abortion pill by mail experiment has been going on for nearly five years and has now expanded to 13 states. In addition to placing the lives of American women and children at risk by offering their clinical study to girls as young as ten years old, they use women in Burkina Faso in their second trimester as research subjects, despite the high risk of infection and uterine rupture—this is also a region where emergency services and blood products for transfusions are in short supply. We find these practices and uses of human subjects to be highly suspect, and we ask the FDA take immediate steps to review these activities.
The members of Congress congratulated Hahn on FDA’s “zealous fight against the abortion industry’s scheme to bypass” the agency’s drug safety program required for some medications with serious safety concerns. The program serves to ensure the benefits of a drug outweigh its risks.
Nevertheless, the lawmakers note that, in July, a “rogue” federal judge sided with the abortion industry and suspended the drug safety program during the coronavirus pandemic, thereby allowing the elimination of the in-person requirement of obtaining the drug.
“We believe that this rogue judicial activism is a gross breach of the separation of powers, undermining the FDA’s statutory authority to ensure drug safety, while recklessly endangering American women and children,” they wrote.
The members of Congress concluded that “it is by now nakedly obvious that the abortion industry and its allies in the media, billionaire philanthropic circles, and special interest groups, have wanted an unregulated and demedicalized abortion pill since the moment the FDA first approved it in 2000.”
They pointed to the abortion drug’s history:
As you may further know, the Clinton administration approved this lethal drug under pressure from these same groups and under a highly politicized approval process. We believe this deadly pill should never have been approved, yet the abortion industry was politically rewarded with an accelerated approval process normally reserved for high-risk drugs that address life-threatening illnesses like AIDS. As you are surely aware, pregnancy is not a life-threatening illness, and the abortion pill does not cure or prevent any disease. Nevertheless, this pill that is specifically designed and intended to kill preborn children was raced to the market, with devastating consequences.
With women and girls able to obtain the drug via tele-abortion, the lawmakers state they will be “left to engage in a form of ‘DIY’ chemical abortion, as the abortion industry collects payments, and as prescribers evade all legal risk and FDA oversight.”
Planned Parenthood announced its new tele-abortion service during the pandemic, which allows girls and women to obtain the drugs to perform at-home abortions.
Planned Parenthood CEO Alexis McGill Johnson called her new tele-abortion service the “silver lining” of the coronavirus crisis.
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 a video 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.
In May, national pro-life leaders wrote to 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.