House Dems Introduce Bill to Affirm FDA Approval Authority After Abortion Pill Ruling

Democrat Reps. Pat Ryan (NY) and Lizzie Fletcher (TX) reintroduced a bill on Monday that would “reaffirm” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority to regulate abortion pills.

The lawmakers reintroduced the “Protecting Reproductive Freedom Act” in response to a ruling out of Texas on Friday halting the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, the first drug used in a two-drug medication abortion regimen. The bill, which is endorsed by abortion giants Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America, would also shield doctors who prescribe medication via telehealth across the country, including in states that outlaw or restrict abortion. The bill is unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

“A woman’s right to choose is one of our country’s foundational freedoms,” Ryan claimed in a statement. “These deeply personal and private medical decisions should be made by women and their families, not by extremist judges, courts, or politicians.”

 “Mifepristone is a safe and effective medication that has been prescribed by doctors during the over two decades since the FDA approved it,” he continued. “However, the Texas decision has nothing to do with science or medicine and everything to do with radical groups whose only goal is a national abortion ban. My priority is protecting abortion access for women in New York and across the country. This legislation will reaffirm the FDA’s approval authority and protect doctors who use telemedicine to prescribe medication abortion.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit in November of 2022 against the FDA on behalf of four national medical associations and several doctors, alleging that the agency “chose politics over science and approved chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States.” The lawsuit pointed to six discrete agency actions since the legalization of mifepristone and misoprostol in 2000 and asked the court to hold the agency’s actions unlawful. The ADF filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas and called the lawsuit the first of its kind.

Part of the ADF’s argument was that the “only way” the agency could have approved chemical abortion drugs “was to use its accelerated drug approval authority, necessitating that FDA to call pregnancy an ‘illness’ and argue that these dangerous drugs provide a ‘meaningful therapeutic benefit’ over existing treatments.”

“But pregnancy is not an illness, nor do chemical abortion drugs provide a therapeutic benefit over surgical abortion. In asserting these transparently false conclusions, the FDA exceeded its regulatory authority to approve the drugs,” the complaint states. 

Related: Planned Parenthood CEO: Ignoring Court Ruling on Abortion Pill Dangerously Sacrifices Crucial Institutions for Power

In a 67-page opinion, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk wrote that the FDA unlawfully approved mifepristone and put his decision on hold for seven days to allow the “federal government time to seek emergency relief from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.”

Kacsmaryk wrote in his decision that at most, the FDA could have lawfully approved mifepristone “for cases where a pregnant woman’s life or health is in danger,” but “even a limited approval of this sort would still not render pregnancy an ‘illness.'”

“And surgical abortion — a statistically far safer procedure — would still be available to her. But in any case, that is not what FDA did. Instead, FDA manipulated and misconstrued the text … to greenlight elective chemical abortions on a wide scale. Therefore, Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of prevailing on their claim that Defendants violated [the law],” he continued. 

In the process of a medication abortion, mifepristone is used to block 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. 

The pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute found that mifepristone is used for more than half of all abortions in the United States. In 2020, the drug accounted for 53 percent of all abortions, up from 39 percent in 2017.