WASHINGTON, D.C., May 5, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Dozens of pro-life leaders have urged the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seize websites of abortionists that are illegally offering abortion pills online. In a letter dated May 4, they called on the FDA “to protect women from the distributers of abortion-inducing drugs who place lives at risk by circumventing your agency’s regulatory safeguards.”
The letter was signed, among others, by Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List; Kristan Hawkins, President of Students for Life of America; Lila Rose, President of Live Action; Father Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life; and Jeanne Mancini, who is the organizer of the yearly March for Life in the nation’s capital.
They recalled that over a year ago, the FDA “sent warning letters to AidAccess and Rablon,” which are providing access to abortion pills on the internet. “Yet, these websites remain active and continue to dispense abortion-inducing drugs, including mifepristone, through internet prescriptions or orders that are purportedly filled by pharmacies in India, and then shipped to customers in the United States.”
On March 8, 2019, the FDA had written to both AidAccess and Rablon, “FDA requests that you immediately cease causing the introduction of these violative drugs into U.S. commerce.”
The pro-life leaders summarized how abortion pills are used.
“Mifeprex (or its recently-approved generic), used in combination with misoprostol, is the only FDA-approved regimen for drug-induced abortion. Mifeprex is subject to a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS),which, as stated in the warning letters, ‘is intended to mitigate the risk of serious complications associated with Mifeprex.’ Further, ‘[c]onsistent with the REMS, Mifeprex is not sold through retail pharmacies or over the internet.”
Nevertheless, “AidAccess and websites within Rablon’s network continue to flagrantly subvert the REMS by marketing mifepristone to U.S. customers.”
Recently, 159 pro-life members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate called on the FDA “to continue to robustly enforce” the REMS for the abortion pill. Various abortions advocates had attempted to use the coronavirus crisis to ease restrictions placed on access to medication abortion.
As the members of Congress pointed out in a letter dated April 14, “there are some who seek to exploit this time of crisis to push for the weakening or overturning of critical Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) association with medication abortion drugs, which would put women at significant risk.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser of the Susan B. Anthony List said the FDA should “protect American women from dangerous abortion drugs entering the U.S. market illegally from overseas. AidAccess, Rablon, and the abortion radicals who operate these illegal pill-mills jeopardize women’s health and safety every day they continue to operate.”
“Chemical abortion drugs pose a serious risk of potentially life-threatening complications,” she explained. “Research shows as many as five to seven percent of women who undergo chemical abortions will require follow-up surgery.”
Dannenfelser called out the abortion industry for promoting the abortion pill “as the safe, easy, near painless way to have an abortion.” In truth, she said, “women have experienced intense pain, severe and heavy bleeding, and even death as a result of chemically-induced abortions.”
“As our nation responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope to see the FDA to step up enforcement of the commonsense regulations they have already put in place to mitigate the expansion of these dangerous drugs,” she added.
Similarly, Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life pointed out that the abortion industry “willingly risks women’s lives by distributing chemical abortion drugs in ways that we know have resulted in women’s deaths.”
“The FDA must hold the line on the health and safety standards in place to protect women from a predatory abortion sales team that wants to drop a few pills in the mail or e-mail a prescription to a pharmacy and medically abandon the women who take them,” she emphasized.
Once a woman has taken the first abortion pill, for a short period of time, there is still a chance her baby can be saved. The Charlotte Lozier Institute explains the whole abortion pill reversal procedure, which is both simple and safe, in an infographic.
The medical abortion is committed by taking mifepristone, followed by misoprostol 24 to 72 hours later. “Mifepristone is a progesterone receptor blocker which causes separation of the placenta from the uterus which leads to the death of the embryo or fetus. The misoprostol causes the uterus to contract and expel the remains of the child.”
To reverse the medical abortion, women take progesterone, orally or as an injection, “as soon as possible after taking the mifepristone but before taking the misoprostol.”
A whole website is dedicated to helping women with an abortion pill reversal.