Concerned Women for America (CWA) submitted an important amicus (friend of the court) brief in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This case, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas, challenges the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) decision to legalize a dangerous chemical abortion regimen that includes two drugs: mifepristone and misoprostol.
The FDA abused its authority with the approval of these dangerous drugs, undermining its legal obligation to protect women’s health, safety, and welfare. This regimen is likely to cause more harm and complications for women than a surgical abortion would. Worse yet, following its initial approval, the FDA has removed the most basic standards of care by increasing the gestational age for which a pregnant woman can take chemical abortion drugs, changing the dosage, significantly reducing the number of required in-person visits, and even allowing non-doctors to prescribe and administer chemical abortions, among other things.
CWA argues in our legal brief that liberal, pro-abortion policies and not science are behind the FDA’s push to increase the availability of these dangerous drugs. We write:
The public deserves better than the current rush to experiment with chemical abortions on American women. The charge the public has placed on the FDA should be guarded in law to protect the public trust that is crucial to the proper function of our public institutions. Scientific advancement and research are not driving chemical abortion policy. Politics drives it. An apparent effort to undermine the United State Supreme Court’s recent acknowledgment that there is no constitutional right to an abortion is driving it. The U.S. Supreme Court’s determination in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 142 S. Ct. 2228 (2022), has allowed states to enact laws protecting the unborn at different stages of development. The Biden Administration and its supporters do not like that and have therefore been aggressively pushing to promulgate abortifacients to circumvent these duly enacted state laws. Lost in that urge though are the seriously increased risks for women utilizing these drugs under waning supervision.
The Plaintiffs standing for the safety of women include the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians, and the Christian Medical & Dental Association, among others, which the Alliance Defending Freedom represents.
CWA is asking the Court to grant the Plaintiff’s motion for a preliminary injunction preventing the FDA from continuing its reckless approval of the widespread distribution of these dangerous drugs immediately and to ultimately rule on the side of the safety and welfare of women by making that injunction permanent.
We argue that the public interest in this case weighs heavily against the FDA’s actions which further erode the public’s trust in this crucial health institution. We remind the Court that a recent survey found that only four in ten Americans are confident of the information they receive from the FDA—a disastrous development for women’s health and safety. “[I]t is decisions such as this one relating to the approval and promotion of chemical abortion drugs that appear to be driven by politics rather than scientific advancement that contribute to this state and further aggravate the distrust. It ultimately puts women’s lives at greater risk,” we argue.
Click here to read our brief, and pray for a favorable hearing and ultimate outcome.