Tag: fda
RFK Jr.

RFK Jr. Says He Backs National Abortion Ban

Conspiracy theorist and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., confirmed Sunday that he would back a national abortion ban after first three months of pregnancy, NBC exclusively reports.

Despite Kennedy's choice to identify as a Democrat, the Democratic hopeful's more conservative opinions have landed him on the radar of Republicans like Florida governor and 2024 Republican candidate Ron DeSantis.

DeSantis, who passed a six-week abortion ban in the Sunshine State this year, has said he would consider appointing Kennedy to lead either the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) if elected president.

During an NBC News interview at the Iowa State Fair Sunday, Kennedy said, "I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life. Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child. I'm for medical freedom. Individuals are able to make their own choices."

NBC reports that when the presidential hopeful was "pressed" further on the matter, he confirmed that he would sign "a federal ban at 15 or 21 weeks."

The New Republicreports, "An overwhelming majority of Americans—62 percent, to be exact—still think abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center. What's more, people consistently vote in favor of increasing abortion rights protections."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Gavin Newsom

Democratic Governors Plan To Stockpile Abortion Medications

Following the unprecedented decision by a federal judge in Texas to stay the Food and Drug Administration's approval two decades ago of the abortion medication mifepristone, officials in Democratic-led states are now stockpiling both that medicine and a second one used in abortions, misoprostol, to ensure that they remain accessible to patients.

So far, Democratic officials in Washington, California, New York, and Massachusetts have announced measures to purchase and store large quantities of the drugs in their states.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Tuesday that the state would purchase 150,000 mifepristone pills.

During a Planned Parenthood conference, Hochul said: "I'm proud to announce that New York State will create a stockpile of misoprostol, another form of medication abortion. … Extremists, judges have made it clear that they won't stop at any one particular drug or service. So it's going to ensure that New Yorkers will continue to have access to medication abortion no matter what."

Connecticut has not yet begun storing mifepristone, but that state's Attorney General William Tong says his office has been proactively notifying pharmacies to confirm that the drug remains legal in the state and to offer support should a Republican attorney general in another state try to convince them otherwise.

On Monday Tong said: "(I'm) obviously deeply disappointed that my colleagues have taken that action. … We're pushing back on that. We're in communication with all the big pharmacy chains, advising them of their rights and obligations here in Connecticut."

According to Bloomberg, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced her state would reserve 15,000 doses of mifepristone. She also issued an executive order both to safeguard the availability of the medication and to protect physicians who perform abortion procedures in her state, the Guardian reports.

In early April, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee announced his state would invest in a three-year supply of mifepristone. In a statement, Inslee said that his office had "directed the state Department of Corrections, using its existing pharmacy license, to purchase the medication last month. The full shipment was delivered on March 31."

Inslee tweeted on Monday: "After we announced our actions last week to protect access to mifepristone, it's heartening to see other states doing the same. To be clear: no matter the outcome of the TX case, WA's laws ensure we will be able to sell and distribute this medication."

Mifepristone and misoprostol are used in a two-drug procedure to terminate a pregnancy through 10 weeks' gestation. The drugs are used in over half the abortions carried out in the U.S.

Misoprostol can be used on its own and is effective for abortions, but the two-drug combo has fewer side effects, and both drugs are commonly used in treating cases of miscarriage.

On Friday, after the ruling by Texas U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ordering a stay of the FDA's 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state has already collected 250,000 doses of misoprostol, with nearly two million more pills coming.

"In response to this extremist ban on a medication abortion drug, our state has secured a stockpile of an alternative medication abortion drug to ensure that Californians continue to have access to safe reproductive health treatments," Newsom said in a statement Monday. "We will not cave to extremists who are trying to outlaw these critical abortion services. Medication abortion remains legal in California."

The office of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has launched a new website offering facts and information on abortion care.

In a statement following Kacsmaryk's ruling, Shapiro said, "Your rights and freedoms here in Pennsylvania have not changed — you can get a safe, legal medication abortion using mifepristone in our Commonwealth." He added, "As your Governor, I believe decisions on reproductive care are to be made between women and their doctors, not extremist politicians or radical court rulings."

Reprinted with permission from American Independent.

Abortion Pills

Trump-Appointed Judge Blocks Sales Of Safe, Effective Abortion Drug

Large scale testing has shown the the drug mifepristone is actually safer than many medications that are given out millions of times a year—including such common antibiotics as penicillin and “male enhancement” drugs like Viagra. In addition to supporting a medically safe abortion, the drug has been used used for over two decades in the treatment of type 2 diabetes and Cushing syndrome. An analysis of all available data by CNN put the odds of dying from mifepristone at 0.0005 percent.

That extreme level of safety is why the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) first approved prescription use of mifepristone in 2000, and why in January the FDA changed regulations around it to make it readily available in pharmacies. It’s also used safely by millions in other countries.

But on Friday, Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed to a seat on the Northern District of Texas bench straight from the ultra-conservative First Liberty Institute, made an extraordinary and unprecedented ruling, ignoring the safety data presented by the FDA and others, and “suspending” that FDA approval. The ruling could potentially block the sale of mifepristone not just in states that have outlawed abortion following the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, but in every state, including those where abortion remains legal.

Currently, mifepristone is used in over half the abortions performed in the United States.

As The Washington Post reports, Kacsmaryk has a long history of anti-abortion views. In fact, this isn’t the first abortion-related case to drop onto Kacsmaryk’s docket. That’s because anti-abortion groups know that he’s a guaranteed win, that they have engaged in “forum shopping,” contriving ways to file their case so that it will be heard in Kacsmaryk’s court.

In this case, the group Alliance Defending Freedom, which has taken part in several other lawsuits aimed at ending abortion rights, including the Mississippi case that led to the reversal of Roe v. Wade, filed suit in Amarillo claiming unspecified damage by four doctors who has prescribed the drug to patients. That suit claimed that “FDA lacked the authority to approve the drug, did not adequately study the medication and that the drug is unsafe.”

Kacsmaryk chose to accept the unsupported claims by Alliance Defending Liberty rather than the raft of studies showing mifepristone’s safety. In his 67-page ruling, he went out of the way to berate the FDA and to claim that the agency had “acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns—in violation of its statutory duty” because of political pressure.

The Biden administration will certainly appeal the ruling, but one of the reasons abortion groups love to go to Kacsmaryk is that any appeal from him ends up in the Fifth Circuit. That court was described inEsquire as “the blown fuse of American jurisprudence.” Or, as The Washington Post explains.

The arrival of a half-dozen judges picked by President Donald Trump—many of them young, ambitious and outspoken—has put the court at the forefront of resistance to the Biden administration’s assertions of legal authority and to the regulatory power of federal agencies. Their rulings have at times broken with precedent and exposed rifts among the judges, illustrating Trump’s lasting legacy on the powerful set of federal courts that operate one step below the Supreme Court. Even some veteran conservatives on the court have criticized the newcomers for going too far.

The next step from there is the Supreme Court … the same court that tossed five decades of rights out the window in 2022.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Abortion Pill Rises

As Use Of Abortion Pill Rises, Right-Wing Media Spread Misinformation

Following news that retail pharmacies will be able to distribute prescription medication used for abortions, anti-choice activists are flooding the right-wing media ecosystem with medical misinformation that falsely posits abortion medication as unsafe. This renewed attack on medication abortion is making it more difficult for pregnant people seeking credible information to make their own health care decisions.

Earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration announced that retail pharmacies in states where abortion is legal will be able to fulfill prescriptions for mifepristone, one of two medications used for abortions, after they’ve received a government certification. Three of the nation’s largest retail pharmacies — Walgreens, CVS, and Rite Aid — have already expressed their intent to distribute the medication.

Since Roe v. Wade’s reversal last year, medication abortion has become a particularly important safety net, as 14 states have harshly restricted or outright banned abortion, leading dozens of clinics to stop offering abortion care. Demand for abortion medication has surged in states with restrictions, and most abortions in the U.S. are now performed through medication. On January 25, the maker of mifepristone filed a lawsuit hoping to expand access of the medication to states with abortion bans, arguing that the FDA’s approval of the drug in 2000 makes restricting its distribution illegal.

With Roe’s reversal, the political right has pivoted from fixating on the Supreme Court to seizing on medication abortion, with the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists helping lead the way. AAPLOG is a group of anti-abortion doctors whose mission is to leverage their professional credentials to stigmatize abortion care and scare away pregnant people seeking abortions by spreading medical misinformation. Now, as medication abortion has become a renewed object of conservative attention, right-wing outlets are increasingly turning to AAPLOG’s leaders as expert opinions undermining mifepristone.

Here’s how conservative media are doubling down on their misinformation efforts as the anti-abortion movement moves on past Roe:

  • After the FDA announced that retail pharmacies could dispense mifepristone prescriptions, AAPLOG’s outgoing CEO Dr. Donna Harrison appeared on the conservative TV network Newsmax on two different programs on January 10. On The National Report, Harrison stressed that the FDA’s announcement was “scientifically and medically irresponsible” and overstated the possibility of the rare side effects of taking the medication in an effort to scare patients away. Harrison also fearmongered that the distribution of medication abortion would lead to the “enablement of both abusers and pimps,” even though pregnant people denied an abortion are actually more likely than people who have abortions to be tethered to abusive relationships.
  • In a January 14 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Harrison falsely warned that medication abortion is “never safe” and fearmongered about potential side effects of mifepristone, claiming that the medication could lead to “the kind of bleeding one might see in a major motor vehicle accident.” (Bleeding is a normal side effect of taking abortion medication, but the description Harrison gave is much less common.)
  • On January 5, anti-abortion site Pregnancy Help News quoted a representative from the extremist evangelical group Family Research Council that selling medication abortion “will transform pharmacies from centers of healing into centers of death.” Anti-choice activist Lila Rose likened distributing mifepristone to “dispensing lethal poison alongside antibiotics and allergy medication.” Pregnancy Help News also cited research from the Charlotte Lozier Institute (a branch of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America) and AAPLOG, both organizations known for spreading misinformation on abortion.
  • Pregnancy Help News published a similar piece on January 22 centered around a speech from AAPLOG CEO-elect Dr. Christina Francis at the 2023 National Pro-Life Summit held by Students for Life of America. While peddling misinformation about medication abortion, Francis claimed that “women deserve to have accurate information” and decried what she described as “the abortion industry and unfortunately its allies in the medical profession” in a speech titled “Debunking the Myths of Chemical Abortion.” Francis falsely claimed that medication abortion is more unsafe than surgical abortion and promoted the concept of abortion pill reversal — which the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists described as “unproven and unethical” but Pregnancy Help News referred to as a “ray of hope.”
  • An opinion piece featured in Townhall on January 12 attacked CVS and Walgreens as “neighborhood abortion drug dealers” because of the pharmacies’ plans to distribute prescription mifepristone. Even though abortion medication is extremely safe, the piece suggested the hangers used in illegal abortions have been replaced by mifepristone — an extremely fraught comparison used to falsely paint medication abortions as “fundamentally dangerous, physically risky, and even deadly.” Further, the article recommended pregnant people visit the deceptively named “pregnancy help centers,” another name for so-called crisis pregnancy centers that dissuade visitors from receiving abortions under the guise of providing actual support.
  • A January 20 Daily Caller article quoted AAPLOG’s Francis criticizing the embrace of medication abortion post-Roe as proof that “medicine, in general, is moving in a more pro-death direction.” The piece also cited Dr. Ingrid Skop, a representative from the Charlotte Lozier Institute, who similarly fearmongered about standard reproductive health care and stated that “the battle is not over and the battleground has shifted” after Roe, adding that medication abortion is “one of the things we are having to fight.”

In addition to right-wing media undermining mifepristone’s proven safety and efficacy, GOP politicians in Alabama and South Dakota have threatened criminal charges for dispensing or taking abortion medications, and a coalition of anti-abortion activists are suing to overturn the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

Conservative media’s moral panic against mifepristone isn’t new: Many of the same narratives have been recycled from previous fearmongering when the medication was permanently approved for mail distribution in December 2021 and when Roe was officially overturned in June 2022.

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is medication abortion?

Medication abortion, also known as the abortion pill, is a form of early abortion caused by taking two different medications. It is an option for people who are within 10 weeks pregnant.

What is mifepristone?

Mifepristone is one of two medications used for medication abortions. It blocks the hormone progesterone needed for a pregnancy to continue.

Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.