Family Council Joins Legal Brief Against Mail-Order Abortion Drugs

Abortion, , , ,

On February 13, Family Council joined 43 other pro-life leaders in a legal brief challenging mail-order abortion drugs.

The case is Louisiana v. FDA, in which the State of Louisiana is challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2021 and 2023 rule changes that removed important restrictions on RU-486 and allowed abortion drugs to be delivered through the mail without an in-person visit with a doctor.

Since then, abortionists in other states have marketed abortion drugs to women in Arkansas even though abortion is generally prohibited except to save the life of the mother and it is a crime to deliver abortion drugs by mail into the state.

A good court ruling in this case could help stop the flow of abortion drugs across state lines.

Advancing American Freedom, who led the amicus brief in Louisiana, issued a statement about the lawsuit, saying:

Rosalie Markezich, a Louisiana woman, did not want an abortion. Yet, since the FDA no longer requires women to meet with a medical professional to obtain a mifepristone prescription, her then-boyfriend was able to obtain chemical abortion drugs from a California abortionist through the mail. He then coerced Roselie into taking the abortion pill which killed her baby and left her with lasting mental health challenges, physical pain, and heavy bleeding.

Abortionists should not be able to disregard the laws of pro-life states made possible by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Ignored by the FDA to increase access to abortion drugs, since 1873, the Comstock Act has expressly prohibited the mailing of abortion materials, including any  “thing . . . intended for producing abortion.” Yet the FDA’s removal of the in-person visit requirement facilitates exactly that.

The amicus brief argues that states have the authority to restrict or prohibit abortion, and that the FDA’s abortion drug rules undermine states’ authority to enforce their pro-life laws.

New evidence shows that abortion drugs are much more dangerous than the FDA previously thought. A recent study by the experts at the Ethics and Public Policy Center found abortion drugs are at least 22 times more dangerous than the U.S. Food and Drug Administration labeling indicates. Nearly 11% of women experience serious health complications from abortion pills — including sepsis, infection, and life-threatening hemorrhage. These drugs should not be available at all — much less through the mail.

Family Council is pleased to join with so many other excellent groups who are willing to stand up for innocent human life in court.

You Can Read The Amicus Brief Here.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Pro-Life Advocate Speaks Out Against Surrogacy

Bioethics, Surrogacy, ,

Pro-life advocate Dr. Abby Johnson recently posted a statement on social media opposing surrogacy, calling it “child abuse.”

Dr. Johnson was a Planned Parenthood clinic director until 2009, but she became pro-life after witnessing an ultrasound-guided abortion. Today she is a pro-life author and speaker and an advocate for women and unborn children.

In a statement posted last week, Dr. Johnson criticized gestational surrogacy, saying:

Two men can’t make a baby. Two women can’t make a baby. Two men or two women paying for surrogacy is child abuse, because it purposely separates that child from their God-given right to a mom and dad. Children aren’t pets.

They’re human beings with rights.

We have written many times about how surrogacy — especially commercial surrogacy — exploits women and hurts children.

In commercial surrogacy arrangements, corporate agencies hire women to carry children for paying customers.

Unlike many other countries, the United States has relatively few regulations when it comes to surrogacy — and that’s a problem.

Last year, news outlets reported that a sex offender convicted of crimes involving children was able to obtain a child through surrogacy in Pennsylvania as a result of lax state regulations.

The New Yorker reported last week that a wealthy couple in Los Angeles allegedly used a surrogacy agency they operated to hire dozens of women across the U.S. to carry more than 20 children for them. According to the magazine, the children were removed from the home and placed in foster care after one of them was hospitalized with injuries “consistent with ‘those sustained during a car accident or from being shaken.'”

Last year The Wall Street Journal uncovered how Chinese billionaires are exploiting America’s surrogacy industry to create what some call “mega-families” with dozens or even hundreds of children.

The Wall Street Journal also has written about allegations of financial fraud among commercial surrogacy businesses.

In December, The New York Times and NBC News both reported about investigations into a surrogacy agency that abruptly shutdown, causing clients to lose an estimated $2 – $5 million total.

Stories like these underscore why social commentators and policymakers worldwide have raised concerns about commercial surrogacy and how it financially pressures women.

It’s bad when commercial surrogacy goes wrong — but it’s important to remember that surrogacy never “goes right” either.

Commercial surrogacy deliberately deprives children of their biological mothers or fathers.

It treats pregnancy like a “service” that can be purchased.

It treats women like commodities, and it treats children like products that can be made to order and sold for profit.

Commercial surrogacy also relies heavily on in vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies that have serious problems of their own.

Family Council has opposed commercial surrogacy in Arkansas, but unfortunately, Arkansas’ commercial surrogacy laws are very lax.

Since 2017, Family Council has supported legislation to prohibit commercial surrogacy in Arkansas. So far, those restrictions have not passed.

Human beings are not products that can be made to order, bought, and sold. That’s why Family Council opposes commercial surrogacy — and why we will continue to oppose it.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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Huge Legal Win for Detransitioner

LGBT, Video, ,

Detransitioner Chloe Cole and Alliance Defending Freedom’s Matt Sharp recently appeared on News Nation to discuss the first jury verdict to find medical malpractice for performing a sex-change surgery on a teenage girl struggling with gender dysphoria.

A New York jury awarded the plaintiff in the case $2 million in damages for the harm that was done to her.

As News Nation notes in the story, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons recently said it found “insufficient evidence” that the benefits of sex-change surgery outweigh the risks for children with gender dysphoria.

In 2021, lawmakers in Arkansas passed the Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act — a good law generally prohibiting doctors from performing sex-change procedures on children.

The SAFE Act was upheld in federal court last year and is protecting children in Arkansas right now.

Arkansas has also enacted measures letting victims of sex-change procedures file malpractice lawsuits against those responsible.

You can watch News Nation‘s entire story here.

Articles appearing on this website are written with the aid of Family Council’s researchers and writers.

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