By Randall K. O’Bannon, Ph.D., NRL Director of Education & Research
If you want to see just how much the administration of the pro-abortion team of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris changed things on abortion, consider one of the last rulings by the Supreme Court that occurred under former President Donald Trump’s administration.
Abortion advocates had been angling for years to get the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to drop regulations requiring women to pick up their abortion pills in person. That requirement was an admission that mifepristone and misoprostol were dangerous—that, at a minimum, a woman needed to see her pill prescriber in person, to make sure she was fully screened and counseled about using the pills, and what to do if she encountered problems.
When COVID hit, abortion advocates ramped up the pressure. It was too dangerous to make women come into the clinic, they said, and she would be fine doing her counseling online and having the pills shipped to her where she could take them and manage her abortion at home.
They made this case to U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in July of 2020, who overruled the FDA on the rules that said these pills could be mailed without any office visit.
The Trump administration appealed this to the Supreme Court. The Court ultimately sided with the president in FDA v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. They ruled that the FDA, not the lower courts, was the agency which had the authority to make decisions about whether and how drugs should be used.
That decision came down January 12, 2021, just days before Biden and Harris took office on January 20, 2021. Less than three months later, on April 13th, the Biden-Harris administration had acting FDA commissioner Janet Woodcock issue a letter to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).
The letter informed ACOG that the FDA would no longer enforce its rule about requiring in-person pick up of abortion pills. Women could have mifepristone, the first of two drugs in the chemical abortion regimen, along with the accompanying prostaglandin, sent in the mail.
Though this was presented as a temporary suspension of the rules during the pandemic, Biden’s and Harris’ FDA pledged a review of the regulations by year’s end to make the suspension of the rule permanent.
Right on cue, the Biden-Harris administration announced on December 16, 2021, that the FDA was permanently dropping the rule about in-person distribution of the abortion pill. This opened the door to delivery by mail and even allowed online and retail drug stores to stock and sell mifepristone.
All this less than a year into office.
Over the next few years, the Biden-Harris administration worked to put flesh on these new regulations, outlining how online merchants and retail drug chains could qualify and add mifepristone to their offerings.
It is because of Biden’s and Harris’s efforts that Walgreens is now dispensing mifepristone in more than 20 states and CVS is also selling in many states. By ignoring their own certification and safety rules, it also opened the door wide to rogue online groups, allowing them to sell and ship abortion pills to women in states where abortions are not legal.
In fact, instead of enforcing the limited safety and distribution rules that remain, the Biden-Harris administration has taken the lead in defending the deadly pill’s safety and efficacy against a mountain of evidence to the contrary.
A group of pro-life doctors brought suit against the FDA for cutting corners in its original approval and subsequent relaxation of safety standards. Despite the testimony of doctors of multiple cases where serious medical issues like bleeding, retained tissue, infections threatened the lives of their patients, the Biden-Harris administration defended the agency in court, maintaining the drug was safe.
The Supreme Court essentially threw out FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine on a technicality, saying the doctors lacked “standing” because they were not directly impacted by the FDA rules.
Vice President Harris reiterated the administration’s commitment to the cause.
“This is not a cause for celebration,” Vice President Harris told reporters. “We must remain clear-eyed about the threats to reproductive freedom in America and we must remain vigilant.”
Furthermore, rather than take responsibility for women who were injured or died as a result of the FDA’s relaxed drug protocol, Vice President Harris blamed the state of Georgia when it was revealed abortion pill patient Amber Thurman died on the operating table in 2022 from blood loss and septic shock after an incomplete abortion.
Nothing in Georgia law, however, prevented Thurman’s treatment. Gestational limits and follow-up monitoring requirements that were in the original FDA mifepristone rules might have saved her life, though.
Meanwhile, Harris is running a campaign to revive Roe and bring back the “good old days” of universal abortion on demand. Her website says, “Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Kamala has led the fight to restore reproductive freedom, crisscrossing the country to stand up for women’s access to health care, supporting health care providers, and shining a light on the crisis. She is the first sitting Vice President to visit a reproductive health care clinic.”
While abortionists, abortion pill pushers, and abortion advocacy groups would be thrilled to have such a reliable and ardent champion in the White House, America’s women and their unborn children need someone that will look out for their safety and welfare.
