FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASECONTACT: Matt Hadrohumancoalition@pinkston.co
WASHINGTON, DC, February 29, 2024 – Human Coalition, joined by the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to require the FDA reinstate safety protocols for high-risk abortion drugs that it abandoned in recent years.
In a friend-of-the-court brief in the case of U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, Human Coalition supports national medical organizations and doctors in their legal challenge to the FDA’s removal of necessary safety regulations for the abortion drug mifepristone.
Human Coalition and the ERLC’s brief includes the heart wrenching stories of Human Coalition clients who suffered serious and life-threatening complications from the abortion pill. These women needed basic safety standards and proper medical oversight. The women said they were uninformed or ill-informed about the effects of the drugs and the trauma they would experience afterward.
Chelsey Youman, National Director of Public Policy for Human Coalition, on Thursday stated:
“The FDA placed women and their children in harm’s way when it caved to abortion activists and recklessly tossed aside all safety protocols for high-risk abortion drugs. It’s barbaric enough that abortion drugs starve and kill children, but the FDA admits that 1 in 25 women who take the pill will end up in the ER. Women silently carry physical and emotional scars from these abortions because the abortion industry fails to care for them. Our brief details how women are often uninformed of the risks of chemical abortion or of the possible trauma they will experience, yet the FDA allows this entire violent process to happen at home, all alone, without the oversight of a doctor.
“As if that’s not bad enough, this deregulation makes it easier for abusers and traffickers to coercively use these drugs on women – as our brief makes clear is already happening. At a time when we need strong leadership, we’re seeing our government instead do the bidding of abortion activists and leave women to fend for themselves.
“We implore the Supreme Court to listen to the women harmed by abortion pills and put a stop to this lawless landscape of mail-order abortions.”
The Fifth Circuit in August 2023 required the FDA to reinstate some safety regulations that the agency previously rolled back, including: that drugs be prescribed and dispensed in-person, by a physician, in a health clinic setting, limited to use by seven weeks gestation, and that there be mandatory reporting of non-fatal adverse effects of the pills. The Biden administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear oral arguments on March 26.
In a recent survey of likely voters in swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, nearly eight-in-ten respondents (78%) said that “Women and girls should have the ongoing care of a doctor when taking high-risk drugs.” The FDA in 2016 waived the requirement that abortion pills be prescribed and administered by a physician.
In the survey, three-fourths of respondents also said that “No young girl should have an abortion all alone, without medical assistance or even an in-person visit with a doctor.” The FDA in 2016 waived the requirement for an in-person follow-up appointment, and in 2021 did away with the requirement that the pills be dispensed in-person.
Human Coalition’s brief argues that women are paying the costs from the FDA’s decisions to toss aside the safety regulations of mifepristone beginning in 2016, despite its own label for the drug reporting a 1-in-25 hospitalization rate for chemical abortion. The brief includes stories of women who suffered near-death experiences from abortion pills because of neglect by abortion providers. It also includes the stories of women who regret their abortions.
About Human Coalition
Human Coalition is one of the largest pro-life, pro-woman, and pro-family organizations in the country, committed to making abortion unthinkable and unnecessary. Founded in 2009, Human Coalition has grown from a simple internet outreach idea into a comprehensive care network that reaches women facing unexpected pregnancies, rescues innocent preborn children from abortion, and restores families to stability.