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.)

As of early January 2023, Danco Laboratories, the U.S. manufacturer of the abortion pill, announced that the FDA has made changes to its guidelines surrounding the abortion pill. These changes allow pharmacies, from large chains like CVS or Walgreens to small, locally owned businesses, to dispense the pill to anyone with a prescription.

Many women choose the abortion pill (also known as a chemical abortion) because they assume it’s safer and more natural. However, complications occur during chemical abortion four times more frequently than during surgical abortion. According to Dr. Christina Francis, “approximately one in five women will experience a significant complication,” which often must be treated by emergency surgery.

The abortion pill is actually a two-pill regimen made up of different drugs:  Mifepristone, also known as Mifeprex or RU-486, and Misoprostol. When a woman chooses to abort her pre-born baby through a chemical abortion, she first takes Mifeprex. This blocks progesterone, starving the pre-born baby of the nutrients needed to continue developing. One to two days later, she takes Misoprostol, which causes her to deliver her now-dead baby. This part frequently happens in the woman’s own home, so she is responsible for disposing of her pre-born baby’s body, often by flushing it down a toilet.

Unsurprisingly, this causes significant trauma for the woman involved in an abortion. Aside from the moral harm it does to her conscience, seeing her dead child covered in blood and floating in the toilet, often awakens her to the reality of what just happened, causing insurmountable emotional problems she will struggle with for years.

But the emotional trauma resulting from the use of the abortion pill isn’t why it was under guidelines that prevented it from being sold in retail pharmacies. Mifeprex, the first drug in the regimen, is dangerous enough that the FDA gave it REMS status. REMS stands for Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, which is described by the FDA as, “a drug safety program that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can require for certain medications with serious safety concerns to help ensure the benefits of the medication outweigh its risks. REMS are designed to reinforce medication use behaviors and actions that support the safe use of that medication… REMS focus on preventing, monitoring and/or managing a specific serious risk by informing, educating and/or reinforcing actions to reduce the frequency and/or severity of the event.”

Mifeprex is often dangerous. A few of the possible side effects include:

• Death (a tragic example is this 19-year-old who died after taking the abortion pill)
• Flu or fever-like symptoms
• Hemorrhage
• The need for surgical completion afterwards (the baby didn’t die, or the remains and/or placenta are retained, resulting in a need for surgery)
• Pain in the chest, lower back, side, arms, jaw, or neck
• Infection and possible sepsis
• Prolonged bleeding, from several hours to as long as 30 days

Under the previous REMS guidelines for Mifeprex, women could only receive the pill in person at approved clinics or hospitals that could provide certain medical and safety procedures. But as of January 3rd, 2023, the guidelines have been amended by the FDA so that retail pharmacies who “become certified in the Mifepristone REMS Program” can dispense this highly dangerous pill to anyone with a prescription.

Women in hopeless situations, who believe the lie that the abortion pill is a safe and effective way to deal with a difficult circumstance, are unwittingly walking into a deadly situation. These women desperately need Jesus. This world desperately needs Jesus. The culture of death is so insatiable in its thirst for blood that it’s willing to bypass any concern for human life, and any idea of the sacredness of human life, solely to make death easier, more accessible, and more desirable.

Read more:

Four Doctors Groups Tell Federal Court to Pull Abortion Pill From Market, It’s Dangerous for Women (LifeNews.com)

Alarm bells are ringing on the plans pro-abortion advocates are creating for the country if Roe v Wade is overturned. Fearing that medical abortions will be restricted or even eliminated in some states, Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates have changed gears to push for more chemical abortions – what supporters call “self-managed abortions.” Planned Parenthood has even advocated mailing the necessary drugs to women without a medical professional ever seeing the patient in person. The dangers of these drugs and this plan are staggering.

Commonly referred to as either the abortion pill or RU-486, the chemical abortion consists of two drugs, mifepristone, and misoprostol. The first medication, mifepristone, disrupts production of progesterone, a hormone necessary for pregnancy. A few days later, the woman takes the second drug, misoprostol, causing contractions which expel the baby. Medical professionals, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, agree that using a chemical abortion past ten weeks of pregnancy is potentially dangerous to the mother and can cause significant side effects.

Obviously, the impact on the baby is designed to be devastating, but many women are unaware that they are also risking their own lives as well. The typical symptoms a woman might experience when terminating a pregnancy through a chemical abortion are heavy bleeding (similar to that of a natural miscarriage), severe pain lasting a few hours, cramping, nausea, weakness, fever, chills, vomiting, headache, diarrhea, and dizziness. These symptoms may last anywhere from two days to a few weeks and are not considered unusual following a “normal” chemical abortion. However, symptoms can become significantly worse when women unexpectedly suffer severe side effects from one or both of the drugs in the abortion pill.

Severe side effects can include prolonged heavy bleeding lasting weeks, incomplete abortions that require surgical intervention, infections, sepsis, and death. To say that these outcomes are serious is an understatement. According to the FDA, in 2018 there were 24 deaths of women who had taken mifepristone and misoprostol. Additionally, there were 274 hospitalizations and 100 reported infections. These are only the reported problems; how many other women faced severe issues, but their doctors or clinics did not report the problem? Now, Planned Parenthood wants to blindly distribute this poison to women without clearly determining how far along they are in their pregnancy or what underlying health conditions may exist. This plan is not healthcare; it is genocide.

There is, however, some good news. First, for women who have taken mifepristone to start a chemical abortion, a process called abortion pill reversal is successful in some cases. Some doctors will prescribe high doses of progesterone to stop the chemical abortion process. Abortion Pill Rescue Network, in affiliation with Heartbeat International, is a group that connects women to doctors who will prescribe lifesaving medication. The group claims that they have saved over 2,500 babies from chemical abortion.

Second, more life-affirming crisis pregnancy centers are being opened every day across the country. The largest groups operating life-affirming centers are Birthright International, Care Net, and Heartbeat International. Additionally, there are numerous smaller and independent groups operating lifesaving clinics. Not only do these clinics assist expectant mothers, but they also provide STD testing and post-abortive counseling.

Finally, we have hope in the Dodds v Jackson case which is being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. If the Court reverses Roe v Wade, it will not end abortion, but instead will send the discussion back to the individual states. At that point, each state will have to create laws to regulate abortion, and we can ask our representatives to consider banning, or at least limiting access to, chemical abortions. States are divided, but it is likely that several states will significantly limit abortion.

Take ACTION: Regardless of the outcome, we must continue to fight to prevent abortion and help women and families facing a crisis pregnancy. If you are facing a crisis pregnancy and need help, please get in touch with one of the following hotlines:

Birthright International: 1-800-550-4900

Care Net: 1-877-791-5475 or click HERE.

Heartbeat International: 1-800-712-HELP or click HERE.

You can also search “abortion alternatives and clinics near me” to find a clinic within your region. Please note that many search engines will list abortion clinics first. Please ensure that the clinic you choose will support abortion alternatives.

If you have started the chemical abortion process and have changed your mind and want help to possibly reverse the effects, contact the following:

Abortion Pill Rescue Network/Heartbeat International: 877.558.0333 or click HERE.

If you have experienced the pain of abortion and need counseling, regardless of how long ago the abortion occurred, please call one of the hotlines or go to your nearest life-affirming crisis pregnancy center.

Pregnancy care comes at a cost and these lifesaving centers need our help and our financial support! As we begin a new year, please consider making a donation. Also, contact your representatives and ask them to restrict chemical abortions in the state and prevent abortion drugs from being distributed without a physical exam. Lastly, let us all pray that the Supreme Court makes a wise decision in the Dodds v Jackson case and that we can overturn Roe.

All life is precious to the LORD! He declares in His Word:

“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you;
Before you were born I sanctified you.”
~Jeremiah 1:5a

Written by Patricia Mosley

As part of their COVID-19 response, the U.K. initially approved new measures to allow women to take the complete abortion pill regimen at home. Now, it appears that this measure has been reversed. The reasoning given was, “This was published in error. There will be no changes to abortion regulations.”

The abortion pill is a two-drug regimen that is basically a do-it-yourself method anyways, but normally, the woman would have some type of interaction with a physician by taking the first pill (mifepristone) under their supervision at the clinic and then going home to take the second drug (misoprostol) 24-48 hours later.

Because the U.K. considers abortion an “essential service” amid the pandemic, their response was to completely place the burden of abortion on women. These women would have been popping both pills at home with no physician oversight.

But this is what the abortion industry all over the world has been calling for even before the current pandemic—for abortions to be unrestricted, unregulated, and do-it-yourself. Gone are the days when they were calling for “safe, legal, and rare” to protect against desperate women performing their own “back-alley” abortions. Now abortion pills are the new back-alley method, credentialed by the world’s most prestigious medical institutions.

Because the U.S. has FDA restrictions (REMs) on the abortion pill (U.S. brand “Mifeprex”), it cannot be a “complete” DIY method, but either way, restrictions or no restrictions, the abortion pill method is set up to be an at-home, multi-day, traumatic process that comes with the risk of serious complications.

Chemical abortions carry four times the rate of complications compared to surgical abortions. The two side effects observed to be more prevalent during chemical abortions than surgical abortions were hemorrhage and incomplete abortion. An incomplete abortion means there needed to be surgical intervention to extract any remaining parts of the unborn child from the woman’s uterus. Prolonged hemorrhage requiring blood transfusion can occur. It’s already been reported to the FDA that over 500 blood transfusions, over a thousand hospitalizations, and 24 deaths took place as result of Mifeprex. And that is just what’s been reported.

Fortunately right now, the U.S. has strong pro-life leadership from the top down, so at a national level it’s unlikely that we will see abortion be declared an “essential service” at a time like this. However, that will not stop the abortion industry from demanding that it should be. Some states have already deemed abortion “essential.”

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and their allies have already put out a statement complaining that abortions are being left out of essential health care services that need to remain open at this time. Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio is at war with the state Attorney General and Health Department as they continue to perform abortions even though they have been directly ordered not to.

Planned Parenthood claims they can still achieve the goal of conserving medical resources for essential health care personnel combatting COVID-19 by remaining open. How would they do this? They didn’t explain.

It doesn’t take a lot of time to deduce that the abortion industry is likely dispensing abortion pills to pregnant women who are past the FDA-approved gestational age limit of 10 weeks. The abortion industry has already been experimenting with performing abortions past 13 weeks on vulnerable women in Burkina Faso, Columbia, and Mexico.

Even the once abortion-neutral humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders (DWB), with the approval of the World Health Organization, has instructional guidelines on how women can perform their own drug-based abortion up to 22 weeks!

Although they claim these instructional videos are for training their medical workers, they acknowledge that they expect women to go to the site in order to learn how to induce their own abortions.

The fact that chemical abortions already carry significant complications and that the rate of those complications only increase as the gestational age of the pregnancy increases shows that Doctors Without Borders are bordering on medical malpractice.

The complications that can arise from taking the abortion pill place women in life-threatening situations that may require follow-up visits to the abortion clinic and the emergency room. We are now likely to see scenarios where women who have taken the abortion pill regimen will need blood transfusions, treatment for infections, and possible follow-up surgery to complete the abortion, which means they will need to go to the emergency room and wait for treatment next to possible victims of the coronavirus pandemic. How is this conserving medical resources? How is this protecting the safety and health of women?

Thankfully, there are still some reputable medical leaders, such as AAPLOG, who refuse to put women in this type of danger by categorizing abortion as an “essential service.”

Killing innocent children in the womb should never be considered any type of “service,” in the midst of a pandemic or not. By encouraging women to self-manage an abortion up to 22 weeks and calling do-it-yourself abortion a “paid” service, the abortion industry has been and is currently showing us that they have no regard for human dignity whatsoever—for the child or the mother.

This article was originally published at the FRCblog.com.

Abortion pills are becoming more common among women seeking to abort their offspring, and the availability of these pills online is growing, allowing women to avoid going to an abortion clinic entirely.

Numerous news outlets have reported on the efforts of Dutch physician Rebecca Gomperts to expand her 13-year-old internet abortion-pill business Women on Web into the U.S. Gomperts, who launched her U.S. push in April, has received awards from Planned Parenthood and various feminist groups and is also known for her environmental activism.

Reports in the mainstream media have portrayed Gomperts’ efforts as heroic or at least worthwhile, while the perspective of pro-life groups has been given only minimal attention. A story in the Atlantic noted that,

For American women who’ve wanted pills, though, there’s been one major problem: Women on Web wouldn’t ship to the United States. American women could (and do) instead search online for abortion pills, but some of the medicines and pharmacies they’ve found have been less than reliable. Now Women on Web’s founder, a doctor named Rebecca Gomperts, has launched a new service that she says is just as safe as Women on Web, and it does ship to the United States. The cost is $95, but the website says the service will try to help women who can’t pay.

Just like Women on Web, the new service, Aid Access, will screen women for their eligibility to take the pills—they should not be more than nine weeks pregnant—through an online process. (If the pills are taken later, they are less likely to work.) Gomperts will herself fill each woman’s prescription for misoprostol and mifepristone, which together are about 97 percent effective in causing an abortion within the first trimester and already account for a third of all abortions in the United States. She then sends the prescriptions to an Indian pharmacy she trusts, and it ships the pills to women at their homes in the United States.

The market for abortion pills and for buying them online is growing in the U.S. because of their low cost and convenience, because of tightening state restrictions on surgical abortions, and because of the belief that a Trump-era U.S. Supreme Court could overturn Roe v. Wade.

Gomperts was previously hesitant to sell the pills to women in the U.S. because of the strong pro-life movement here. She has established the new, separate service Aid Access so as not to jeopardize Women on Web. In an interview with Mother Jones, Gomperts characterized what she is doing as “humanitarian aid.”

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved the use of abortion pills in 2000, but selling them over the internet through unregulated channels might violate U.S. laws and the FDA has said it is evaluating whether any laws are being broken. Americans United for Life told CNN that Gomperts’ push to sell pills in the U.S. is “reckless and irresponsible.”

Abortion clinics have been providing pills for women up to 10 weeks along in their pregnancies, so they can have what’s called a medical, or chemical, abortion. Mifepristone, also known as RU-486 or Mifeprex, cuts off nutrition to the baby growing in a mother’s womb. The mother then takes misoprostol, typically within 48 hours, which causes intense contractions. Abortion activists misleadingly characterize what happens next as a miscarriage to mask the deliberate taking of a life.

Many women now prefer the idea of having an abortion in the comfort of their own homes as opposed to undergoing a procedure at a clinic, which they consider more invasive and less private. But pro-life groups say a growing number of women are emotionally traumatized by the process, especially if they are not prepared for the possibility of seeing what is clearly a developing baby get expelled from their bodies.

According to LifeSiteNews, chemical abortions put women at a greater risk of being traumatized: “At home, a woman may actually see the remains of her baby, sometimes while alone and in great physical pain…. ‘Those who do see more [by using the abortion pill] have more nightmares, more trauma symptoms.’”

Al Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said earlier this month, “It’s hard to imagine a society any more dangerous and any more deadly than a society that will kill unborn life in the womb by a pill.”

Mohler said Gomperts’ efforts to sell abortion pills online to women in the U.S. reflects “the desperation of the pro-abortion movement, so determined to make abortion available to as many as possible, as quickly as possible, in as uncomplicated a manner as possible, whether or not the law is on their side.”

Women having second thoughts after taking the first abortion pill, RU-486, can potentially get the effects reversed and continue their pregnancies, according to Heartbeat International. The success rate is 64 to 68 percent, according to the group’s Abortion Pill Reversal website. The website can be found at abortionpillreversal.com. There’s also a 24/7 helpline number, 877-558-0333.

Read more:

Yale Now Sells Abortion Drugs From A Vending Machine (The Daily Wire)

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