By Dave Andrusko
When you’re busily typing away, supremely confident in your ardent thirst for more abortions, it’s easy to breezily state, as did the Washington Post editorial board, that “The Supreme Court’s latest abortion case has an obvious answer.”
The “latest abortion case” the court has agreed to hear that has “an obvious answer” is FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Elsewhere today Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRLC’s Director of Education & Research, tells us the case is the first to address abortion—in this case chemical abortions—since the 2022 Dobbs decision which overturned Roe v. Wade.
The Alliance is challenging the way the FDA considered mifepristone—the “abortion pill” — and the cavalier way it loosened regulations on its distribution and use.
In 2016, at the behest of the Danco, the Obama administration, and the abortion industry, the FDA made serious changes in the protocol. The FDA loosened REMS (Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy) regulations and extended eligibility for the drugs to women up ten weeks past their last menstrual period (LMP); broadened the prescriber pool to any “certified healthcare provider”; and dropped the number of required visits to one initial encounter for the woman to be screened and pick up her pills.
With oral argument less than a day away, pro-life groups and the usual anti-life contingent are writing previews today. Let’s see what the latter has to offer.
“The good news is, this isn’t a hard one,” the Post opines. What isn’t “a hard one”?
To overturn the opinion reached by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals which upheld much but not all of U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk decision that “the FDA violated crucial safeguards when it loosened regulations on mifepristone,” the Post editorial board wrote.
That’s quite true but so incomplete as to be misleading. Writing for the New York Times, Emily Bazelon filled in the gaps:
In 2016, it [the FDA] let nurses and others prescribe mifepristone. It also permitted patients to take the pill 10 weeks into pregnancy, extending the limit from seven weeks. In 2021, the F.D.A. allowed providers to send mifepristone by mail, lifting a rule that had required an in-person medical visit. “Study after study has shown that when mifepristone is taken in accordance with its approved conditions of use, serious adverse events are exceedingly rare,” the F.D.A. said in its Supreme Court brief.
The Post and the Times exult in what they clearly see as the amateurish conclusions reached by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Judge Kacsmaryk. The Post writes, in full snark mode, “The Supreme Court must now consider whether to side with the 5th Circuit judges or with the doctors and scientists at the FDA on a subject about which judges generally know little and doctors and scientists a lot.”
Of course it goes without saying, although they say it a lot, that mifepristone is safe, safe, and safer still. “The speculative injury the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine claims is even more dubious considering complications from mifepristone are exceedingly rare,” the Post gloats.  It has “a complication rate lower than Tylenol,” TIME magazine’s Nik Popli writes, a bogus claim that Dr. O’Bannon destroyed.
But there are studies and studies that document complications associated with chemical abortions. Of course, for the most part, only opponents openly discuss how incredibly painful these abortions can be and often are.
“How Painful is Medication Abortion?” is the headline in Medscape. By no means a site sympathetic to our side of the debate, this article, written by Elena Ribodi, ought to be a wake-up call. The basis for her story is an Italian study published in December in the journal Contraception.
She writes, “It’s main conclusion? Increased baseline anxiety levels, dysmenorrhea, and no previous vaginal deliveries are associated with severe pain in women undergoing medication abortion.”
Let’s break those figures down.
Overall, “38% of the women reported severe pain during the medication abortion.” [Emphasis added.] That is about three in eight women report severe pain! That figure is one we haven’t read much—perhaps anything—about.
How about women who have anxiety? Riboldi writes, “The researchers noted a significant correlation between baseline anxiety level and pain perception: women with higher baseline anxiety levels were three times more likely to experience severe pain.” [Emphasis added.]
What about women who suffer from dysmenorrhea? (“Dysmenorrhea is the medical term for painful menstrual periods which are caused by uterine contractions.”)
Riboldi writes, “The numbers were even higher for those who reported dysmenorrhea within the year preceding the medication abortion. Compared with the other women, they were six times more likely.” [Emphasis added.]’
And on and on it goes. We can only hope that the justices of the Supreme Court have read all the briefs and will listen careful to the truth that will be presented to them tomorrow.