WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Family Research Council (FRC) along with post-abortion expert Dr. Martha Shuping submitted an amicus brief last week in the case of U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which is currently before the U.S. Supreme Court and will be argued on March 26. At issue in the case is the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of the abortion drug mifepristone and the agency's 2016 and 2021 removals of health safeguards for women and girls. Dr. Shuping, a North Carolina psychiatrist, has witnessed first-hand the psychological trauma women have experienced because of abortions, including through the effects of intimate partner violence.
The FRC amicus brief stated "support [for] the Fifth Circuit's decision to restore the FDA's previous protections for women's health and safety, before changes made by the FDA in 2016 and 2021...Mifepristone is a drug like no other. A woman can conveniently take it in the privacy of her own home, expecting to end her pregnancy with little difficulty, then find herself alone and without physical or emotional support as she views in horror her unborn child in the toilet or in her hand." The brief goes on to argue: "Along with the long-lasting psychological and spiritual distress that can arise from this experience, there are serious, even life-threatening, adverse effects that have occurred...One might have expected that such a drug would be administered under tight supervision and with an ironclad protocol designed to get patients help when emergencies arose. That is not how FDA has regulated mifepristone."
Dr. Shuping, who was also a party in this amicus brief, remarked:
"We hear about abortions of unwanted children, but people don't realize that there are many abortions of wanted children--wanted and loved by the mother, but not by an abusive partner. Current regulations make it easier to coerce abortion; resuming previous regulations will improve safety for women in many ways."
FRC Senior Fellow for Regulatory Affairs Dr. Chris Gacek, who assisted in drafting the brief, commented:
"The FDA is yet another example of a bureaucracy pushing a political agenda that has undermined its credibility. When the two-drug abortion regimen was approved in 2000, we argued that the safeguards were inadequate. The FDA gutted even those weak protections in 2016 and 2021. The Fifth Circuit was correct in the assessment putting those changes on hold, and the Supreme Court should affirm its decision in this case."
To read the full amicus brief, please see: http://frc.org/get.cfm?i=LK24C05&f=LK24C05
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