American women are silently suffering while the Food and Drug Administration drags its feet on reviewing the abortion drug mifepristone. Without swift action, an untold number of women will endure unnecessary pain and even potentially death.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Jan. 14, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on the dangers of chemical abortion drugs. The hearing emphasized the need to restore the longstanding regulations on mifepristone, which the Biden administration\u00a0rescinded<\/a>\u00a0during the COVID-19 pandemic\u2014most notably, the requirement that women have an in-person doctor\u2019s visit to determine potential pregnancy risks, or gestational age\u2014as well as the termination of mail-order abortion.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The ultimate takeaway of the hearing was clear: If the FDA doesn\u2019t move quickly to protect American women from the dangers of mifepristone, more women will experience potentially life-threatening consequences, leaving doctors scrambling to provide treatment and combat the effects of an unregulated drug. \u00a0<\/p>\n For years, pro-life advocates, physicians,\u00a0and lawmakers have urged the FDA to conduct a safety review on mifepristone, and to consider reinstating basic safeguards that previously protected patients.<\/p>\n Just this past September, the FDA announced that it was commencing its long-awaited review. And recently, the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs sent a letter to the FDA and the Department of Health and Human Services pleading with the agencies to expedite their investigation into mifepristone.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite the passing months and growing urgency, however, the FDA\u2019s efforts have been\u00a0lethargic at best<\/a>. Meanwhile, I\u2019ve continued my daily practice caring for women afflicted by the pill with growing astonishment at the lack of oversight from our leaders on this public health crisis.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n At the recent hearing, a member of the organization I lead, the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, Dr. Monique Wubbenhorst, shared her firsthand experience working for over 30 years in maternal health across the globe.<\/p>\n Wubbenhorst, who has treated the many serious physical and mental health effects of mifepristone, noted that the drug can cause infection, hemorrhage, the need for blood transfusions, and in extreme cases, death.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Her testimony is buttressed by the FDA\u2019s own data, which admits that about 1 out of 25 women who take mifepristone end up in the emergency room.<\/p>\n Moreover, about\u00a015% of women<\/a>\u00a0who take mifepristone experience hemorrhaging while, according to recent reviews of insurance claims data,\u00a0almost 11%<\/a>\u00a0experience serious adverse reactions within 45 days (approximately 22 times higher than the rate that the FDA reports on the drug label). Other studies show that mifepristone\u2019s rate of complications is four times higher than that associated with surgical abortions.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Compounding the inherent dangers of the drugs themselves are the risks associated with deregulating them.<\/p>\n Eliminating the requirement for an in-person doctor\u2019s visit before acquiring the drugs endangers women, who may not know if they have an ectopic pregnancy, or even how far along in their pregnancy they are. During the hearing, even pro-abortion witness Dr. Nisha Verma admitted that she\u00a0would not distribute mifepristone<\/a>\u00a0to a woman at 20 weeks\u2019 gestation.<\/p>\n Yet the current FDA policy allows anyone to acquire the drugs without confirming gestational age, despite the fact that serious complications\u00a0increase significantly<\/a>\u00a0with increasing gestational age and the fact that\u00a0many women<\/a>\u00a0will be wrong about how far along they are without an ultrasound.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Additionally, since mail-order abortions were endorsed by the FDA, numerous\u00a0abusers<\/a>,\u00a0boyfriends<\/a>,\u00a0and even once trusted\u00a0husbands<\/a>\u00a0have been able to acquire mifepristone by mail in order to force abortions on women.<\/p>\n These horrifying incidents have resulted in the unwanted deaths of preborn babies in addition to severe physical problems and trauma for the women involved.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Despite a growing body of evidence on the harms of these drugs as well as the stories of women and physicians that confirm this harm, pro-abortion lawmakers tried discrediting Wubbenhorst\u2019s testimony\u2014as well as the combined efforts of over 30,000 pro-life medical professionals to demand the FDA expedite its safety review of the drug\u2014by touting the \u201cscience\u201d of mifepristone.<\/p>\n As they sat there\u2014in expensive suits and seats won by the backing of their pro-abortion donors\u2014the irony of them correcting a world-celebrated women\u2019s health physician on women\u2019s health was not lost on me.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n My mind flooded with memories of my own patients, many of whom have had traumatic experiences with mifepristone. Pro-abortion activists and lawmakers were not there to dry their tears or explain what was happening to them or comfort them when they questioned why no one had warned them. I was.<\/p>\n They were not there to intervene emergently to save these women\u2019s lives through blood transfusions, IV antibiotics for severe infection, or emergency surgery for their incomplete abortions. I was.<\/p>\n And they are not there to deal with the aftermath of women poisoned against their will by abusers or prevent this from even happening in the first place. I am.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s unlikely that any of the pro-abortion lawmakers pushing to prevent safety regulations on mifepristone will ever have to deal with the fallout of their policies. The women they claim to champion will\u2013often alone, terrified, and bleeding out in their bathrooms.\u00a0<\/p>\n The pro-abortion activists and physicians haphazardly dispensing these dangerous drugs without appropriate counseling and assessment will not be there to take care of women when they suffer emergent complications\u2014doctors like me and Wubbenhorst will be the ones called to care for them.\u00a0<\/p>\n And while we are happy to do so, we are opposed to the system that creates this scenario in the first place and allows those responsible to escape any accountability.\u00a0The last we heard, the FDA was in the data acquisition stage of its review. Let\u2019s hope that the recent hearing was another piece of evidence of the mail-order abortion crisis unfolding across America and incentivizes it to finally do something about it.<\/p>\n We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as\u00a0representing\u00a0the views of The Daily Signal.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"American women are silently suffering while the Food and Drug Administration drags its feet on reviewing the abortion…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[18172,7552,102,6591,73963,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-410343","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-abortion","9":"tag-fda","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-medication","12":"tag-mifepristone","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}