Today, the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds) released a paper detailing the adverse effects of chemical abortion on pregnant women. This publication comes on the heels of a January 3 announcement from the Biden Administration’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that it will now permit retail pharmacies to dispense chemical abortion pills through the first 10 weeks of gestation, and CVS and Walgreens have announced plans to do so. This change in policy allows pharmacies, which provide drugs to sustain and improve lives, to soon offer drugs with the express intent to kill.
Dr. Jane Anderson, board member of ACPeds and author of the chemical abortion paper said in a statement: “Women are deeply harmed by chemical abortion. This disregard for human life and safety betrays the purpose of the FDA–safety–and reveals what chemical abortion truly serves: politics and profit, not people… Chemical abortion pills are intended to result in the death of a human being. This is antithetical to the practice of medicine. Instead of protecting a mother and her baby, chemical abortion puts a woman’s life at risk and makes her the facilitator of her child’s death.”
The FDA first approved Mifeprex in 2000. The combination of Mifepristone and Misoprostol was approved by the FDA in 2006 to intentionally cause the death of an unborn child in the womb. Chemical abortions now comprise over 50% of all abortions and are six times more likely to cause complications than surgical abortions. These drugs commonly cause heavy bleeding, vomiting, diarrhea, and fever. More rare, but far more severe, chemical abortion can lead to life-threatening hemorrhage or infection.
In 2016, the FDA removed critical safeguards put in place to inform and regulate chemical abortion. This change discarded the requirement for physician oversight and removed mandatory reporting of complications short of death. In 2021, the FDA further struck down safeguards by no longer requiring an in-person visit to receive the drugs. The FDA’s blatant disregard for safety facilitates the use of chemical abortion to cover-up trafficking and abuse, and ignores potential life-threatening dangers of undiagnosed ectopic pregnancy or ingestion of abortion pills past 10 weeks gestation.
