Attorneys general of 23 states have filed two amicus briefs in support of a lawsuit seeking the withdrawal of FDA approval of the drugs mifepristone (RU-486) and misoprostol for use in chemical abortions. Unfortunately, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul is not one of them. Success in this suit could make chemical abortion illegal even in states where abortion access remains legal.

Our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom filed the original suit in November 2022 and represent over 30,000 medical professionals from four national medical associations, and several more independent doctors. ADF argues that because the FDA has never tested the drug on the pediatric population, there is no science backing its safety for use in young women.

Dr. Christina Francis, the CEO-Elect of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and a party in the suit, stated in an interview that Mifepristone is not only untested, but dangerous. She reports that 1 in 5 women have serious complications following chemical abortions including hemorrhage, life-threatening infection and fertility issues.

The AGs Arguments Against Mifepristone

In their brief, the attorneys general argue in part that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone for abortion has two legal flaws. The first is that it defies the agency’s own regulations since the section the FDA first approved the drug under, Subpart H, “does not permit the agency to greenlight elective abortions on a wide scale.”

The second is that allowing abortion medication to be sent via the mail is in direct contrast to a federal law that prohibits “using the mail to send or receive abortion-inducing drugs such as mifepristone.” They go on to state, “The FDA and the Administration as a whole have no intention to respect the Constitution, the Supreme Court, or the democratic process when it comes to abortion.”

The lawsuit is asking the court to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone completely. If this does not happen, they are asking that laws and regulations be followed at all stages in regard to reviewing, approving, prescribing, dispensing, and administering chemical abortion drugs. If the judge doesn’t rule against mifepristone entirely, the lawsuit asks that current laws and regulations be followed in regard to these chemicals.

Where The Case Stands

The State of Missouri filed its own brief on Friday, February 10th, while Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed a brief on behalf of her state as well as Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

The U.S. Justice Department argued in its court filing this lawsuit “is extraordinary and unprecedented.” The United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas will hear the case first.  After this, an appeal would likely go to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and if a ruling in that court were to be appealed, it could go to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Here in Illinois

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul has made it clear that his office will not support efforts to restrict abortion or abortion-inducing drugs in our state.

Based on data from 2020 when there were 46,243 abortions reported in the state, and according to the Illinois Right to Life, “1,180 abortions were performed on minors and 88 were performed on girls younger than 15 years-old.”

Planned Parenthood’s own Guttmacher Institute released a report admitting that chemical abortions accounted for the majority of all abortions in the U.S.. According to this report, in 2020, abortion pills accounted for 54 percent of all U.S. abortions, an increase from 44 percent in 2019.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute reports that the percentage of chemical abortions in Illinois as of 2020 was 19.2 percent and trending higher. If this lawsuit results in the revocation of the approval of mifepristone, many lives will be saved. (20 percent of 46k abortions is 9,200.)

Written by Paula Ryan

In just a few short months, the U.S. Supreme Court will be handing down their decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, determining the constitutionality of a 2018 Mississippi law prohibiting women from accessing abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. This case is expected to determine the fate of Roe v. Wade, the infamous 1973 U.S. Supreme Court ruling preventing states from unduly restricting abortions before the point of viability.

It seems likely that the Court will issue a favorable ruling, which would allow for more extensive protections for the unborn at the state level without interference from the federal courts.  This would be good news. However, it would not be the end of the battle to protect all innocent babies from conception until birth. It also would not undo the damage caused over the past 49 years to families, communities, and individuals throughout the nation but particularly in the Black community.

Since 1973, over 63 million babies have been aborted in the United States, 20 million of whom were Black. According to a report published in January 2022 by the Center for Urban Reform and Education (CURE), while Black women made up 15 percent of the childbearing population in 2018, they obtained 33.6 percent of reported abortions. This translates into 335 abortions per 1,000 live births, which was the highest abortion ratio in the United States. In support of these statistics, the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), using abortion reporting data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reported that for more than 30 years Black women have been experiencing abortions at a rate nearly four times that of white women.

And by the way, this is no accident. According to the aforementioned CURE report, 79 percent of the surgical facilities of Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s (PPFA), which is by far the largest abortion provider in the nation, are within walking distance of Black or Hispanic Communities. The Left claims that these facilities are there to provide health care for the members of these communities.  However, the cold hard truth is that they are taking the life of pre-born black babies for money and their own documents prove it.

In their 2016 Annual Report, PPFA claimed to provide “lifesaving care” and to be an irreplaceable component of the nation’s healthcare system. After careful evaluation and study, CLI issued a lengthy report proving that Planned Parenthood centers are primarily focused on contraceptive services, sexually transmitted infection testing, and abortions. Additionally, they noted that there is “little or no demonstrable capability for definitive diagnosis or a range of treatments for any disease or condition at Planned Parenthood centers.” In layman’s terms, this means that if a woman needs a mammogram or biopsy to detect breast cancer, she would NOT be able to receive these tests at any Planned Parenthood facility. In fact, there isn’t a single Planned Parenthood that has the resources to diagnose or treat any type of cancer. Indeed, with the exception of abortion, Planned Parenthood offers no services that cannot be easily found at alternative providers.

This is not surprising. From its founding by Margaret Sanger in the early 1900s, Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) has been using abortion to target the Black community. Sanger was a leading proponent of controlling the birth rate of those individuals she deemed undesirable or unfit. Sanger laid out her extreme form of eugenics in a 1932 book entitled, “My Way to Peace” where she called for the sterilization of those with mental and physical disabilities, including “morons, mental defectives, epileptics.”

In 1939, Sanger put her plan into action by introducing the “Negro Project,” which was designed to help states with eliminating the “dysgenic horror story” of blacks who reproduced “carelessly and disastrously.” To increase the effectiveness of the project, Sanger even had the unmitigated gall to recruit Black leaders and Black pastors to sell the concepts of contraception and sterilization to the minority populations.

It wasn’t until April 2021 that PPFA even acknowledged the racist roots of the organization by admitting that Margaret Sanger had aligned herself with ideologies and organizations that were unequivocally white supremacist and in doing so had caused permanent damage to millions of people, including generations Black people. Of course, PPFA’s mea culpa was pure window dressing. PPFA is still targeting Black babies for extermination by sending out the same tired, old message that access to abortion in minority communities is a necessary form of health care.

According to Right to Life of Michigan statistics:

• On average, 900 black babies are aborted every day in the United States.

•  The abortion rate for Black women in the United States is almost four times that of White women, which according to CLI, exposes Black women to increased exposure to hemorrhage and infection, the two major causes of maternal mortality.

•  Since 1973, abortion has taken more Black American lives than every other cause of death combined.

Sadly, even when numbers like this clearly expose the determination of the abortion industry – and PPFA in particular – to abort Black babies, prominent Black leaders like former President Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris continue to support them.

While this whole line of thought is frustrating and sad, the most appalling aspect is that the systematic extermination of 20 million Black babies over the past 49 years has happened in THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA…Land of the free…Home of the brave. We need to be better than this.

Regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court decides in Dobbs, there’s no way to erase the damage that abortion has done to the Black community. However, we can build a better America by protecting the most vulnerable members of our society. After all, as Nelson Mandela pointed out, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

This article was originally published by The Family Foundation.