ADF: Supreme Court should reject FDA's fight to put women at risk

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erin Hawley regarding an emergency request the U.S. Department of Justice and Danco Laboratories, the main purveyor of chemical abortion drugs, filed Friday with the U.S. Supreme Court that asks it to temporarily halt the decision of the federal district court in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit kept in place the part of the district court’s order protecting the health and safety of women and girls by restoring critical safeguards to chemical abortion drugs while the lawsuit proceeds:

“The FDA put politics ahead of the health of women and girls when it failed to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and when it unlawfully removed every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions. The FDA should have to answer for the damage it has done to the rule of law and the harm it has caused to countless women and girls. The FDA illegally approved chemical abortion drugs and has evaded its legal responsibility to answer the American people’s questions for two decades. The 5th Circuit rightly required the agency to prioritize women’s health by restoring critical safeguards, and we’ll urge the Supreme Court to keep that accountability in place.”

The 5th Circuit’s order prohibits abortionists from sending chemical abortion drugs through the mail, which the FDA had been allowing since 2021 in direct violation of longstanding federal law. Additionally, in 2016, the FDA extended the permissible gestational age of the baby for which a girl or woman may take chemical abortion drugs—from seven weeks’ gestation to 10 weeks’ gestation. The 5th Circuit’s order moved that back to seven weeks’ gestation, protecting the mother from adverse complications that increase with gestational age, reinstated necessary doctor visits, and brought back the requirement that abortionists must check women for complications after their chemical abortions.

The 5th Circuit also agreed with ADF attorneys that the FDA’s approval of generic mifepristone was unlawful, and that the manufacturer must cease production by Friday.

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

# # #