Abortion drugs like RU-486 are on the rise in America, and the FDA has taken steps to relax its safety policies regarding the drugs — putting women and unborn children at risk.
When the FDA first approved RU-486 in 2000, a woman seeking a drug-induced abortion was required to visit the doctor three times — which included an initial medical evaluation and follow-up appointments to ensure that the woman did not experience health complications.
In 2016, that number of visits was reduced from three to one.
Then in 2021, the FDA removed the in-person visit with a doctor altogether — making it possible to obtain RU-486 at a pharmacy or through the mail without a medical exam or sonogram.
The FDA now faces lawsuits arguing the administration’s abortion drug policies have undermined public health and safety.
In a recent editorial to the Wall Street Journal, Dr. Christina Francis from the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists notes that, “Under the FDA’s relaxed protocols, women are at far greater risk of a deadly ectopic pregnancy.”
Dr. Francis describes risk as a federal courts weigh the FDA’s policy changes, writing,
The FDA, whose principal purview is safety, discounted the need to check for ectopic pregnancies when it revised its protocols for dispensing mifepristone, the primary drug used in a chemical abortion. Why should this matter? Because when a woman has an ectopic pregnancy but mistakes its symptoms for normal drug side effects, she will spend precious minutes or hours at home, which could be the difference between life and death. . . .
A woman today can acquire mifepristone with no screening for an ectopic pregnancy, and she may not even realize she has one until it is a full-blown medical emergency. During oral arguments before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the lawyer representing the FDA was asked how ectopic pregnancy could be ruled out without any kind of medical examination. She replied that you can ask questions like, ‘Are you experiencing shoulder pain?’ If a woman with an ectopic pregnancy is experiencing shoulder pain, she belongs on an operating table and may be within an hour from death.
This simply further goes to show that while abortion drugs end the lives of unborn children, they also carry serious health risks for women.
Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.
