Planned Parenthood wants the warning label removed off of the abortion pill despite the fact that at least twenty-four women have died as a result of taking the pill.
In response, Republican lawmakers joined together and wrote a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to “mandate collecting complete, accurate information on all adverse events related to” the abortion pill mifepristone.
In the letter, Republican lawmakers requested a meeting with the FDA by October 1st to discuss Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) going forward. REMS is a program designed to ensure that drugs are as safe as possible especially “for certain medications with serious safety concerns.”
“Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates have recklessly called for the removal of REMS for mifepristone,” Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks said. “I am proud to stand for life and call on the FDA to strengthen these essential protections.”
Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates have clamored for the removals of REMS from mifepristone. The FDA currently requires that health care providers supervise the order, prescription, and dispensation of the abortion-inducing drug. The FDA further stipulates that only healthcare organizations that meet “certain qualifications” can be qualified to be providers of the drug, and that the drug can “only be dispensed in clinics, medical offices, and hospitals by or under the supervision of a certified healthcare provider.”
Typical Planned Parenthood doesn’t care about these protections put in place by the FDA to safeguard women. Instead, Planned Parenthood would rather let women have easier access to unregulated, potentially harmful, at-home abortion-inducing drugs.
Planned Parenthood’s director of medical standards, Jane Gupta, also said that the FDA’s REMS are “unnecessary restrictions.”
“While the generic form of mifepristone is important and long overdue, the real barrier to accessing medication abortion, especially for those living in rural and medically underserved areas, is the FDA’s unnecessary restrictions on how mifepristone is dispensed,” Gupta said in an August statement to Vox.
“Removing these restrictions and allowing patients to get mifepristone from a pharmacy would help ensure that more people can access early abortion and miscarriage management care, when they need it,” Gupta added.
In response, the lawmakers call on the FDA to increase REMS on mifepristone drugs and warn of dire consequences.
“We vigorously oppose calls by Planned Parenthood and other pro-abortion advocates to remove the REMS for mifepristone,” the lawmakers wrote to the FDA. “Allowing the drug to be available without medical supervision will have dire consequences for women and children.”
“These restrictions are the only thing standing in between on-demand access to an abortion drug that is proven to have serious and even deadly side effects for women – in addition to the tragedy of aborting an unborn child,” Banks added.
Abortion advocates say that usage of the abortion pill is harmless to the mother, but accounts from women who have taken the abortion pill certainly have had negative side effects. According to the FDA, at least twenty-four women had even died from complications resulting from taking the abortion pill.
