Scientists Tell Supreme Court: Abortion Drugs Harm Women

As the nation’s leading pro-life scientific, statistical and research center, the Charlotte Lozier Institute has filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to affirm the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision that found the FDA likely violated the law when it loosened safeguards on abortion drugs by allowing them to be sent by mail.

The Lozier brief was filed in the FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine cases which will be heard on March 26. It extensively cites research and peer-reviewed studies that reject the FDA’s decisions to remove critical protections, demonstrating these decisions were not based in sound science.

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Key arguments from the brief include:

• Accurate abortion data, including data surrounding complications, is often unavailable, and thus broad claims about abortion’s safety are suspect.

“The FDA and Danco argue that mifepristone is ‘safe and effective’ and that adverse events are ‘exceedingly rare.’ But this claim ignores (1) the unavailability of accurate or complete abortion data, (2) the lack of any systematic method for reporting complications, and (3) the documented serious side effects and risks of chemical abortion, including the fact that surgical abortion is actually safer than chemical abortion.”

• The FDA’s continued rollback of safety standards for the abortion drug mifepristone exacerbates these concerns.

“Without an in-person clinical visit, pregnant women are much less likely to receive an ultrasound. Yet ultrasounds are the most accurate way to diagnose ectopic pregnancy, which poses perhaps the greatest health risk to women receiving chemical abortions. If undiagnosed, moreover, ectopic pregnancy poses the most serious complication following unsupervised chemical abortion. Mifepristone and misoprostol will not resolve an ectopic pregnancy because these medications exert their actions on the uterus, allowing the ectopic pregnancy, which exists outside of the uterus, to continue to grow—possibly to the point of tubal rupture, which can lead to catastrophic bleeding and death.”

Additionally, the brief argues the FDA “acted arbitrarily by relying on compromised UK data” as the largest of the peer-reviewed studies cited in its 2021 decision examined only one UK records system that documented an abortion drug complication rate 10 times smaller than reported by another UK records system.

• The FDA and Danco make the erroneous claim that physicians, and the plaintiffs in particular, are not harmed by these inadequate mifepristone regulations.

“When their patients have chemical abortions, obstetricians lose the opportunity to provide professional services and care for the woman and child through pregnancy. Most obstetricians operate under a ‘two-patient paradigm’ because ‘a physician’s ethical duty toward the pregnant woman clearly requires the physician to act in the interest of the fetus as well as the woman.’ Abortion advocates, however, follow a ‘one-patient paradigm,’ whereby the fetus is their second patient only if the mother desires her to be so. These advocates appear to consider ‘unwanted’ pregnancy a disease and recommend abortion as its treatment because it eliminates the disease.”

In conclusion, the brief notes that “by dismissing the serious risks and complications of chemical abortion and by relying on flawed studies that do not account for the deficiencies in abortion-complication data,” the FDA has disregarded what is both known and unknown, to the detriment of both women and physicians.

For more information on the dangers of abortion drugs, visit AbortionDrugFacts.com.

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