Doctors urge Supreme Court to reject FDA's fight to put women at risk

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erin Hawley regarding a brief that ADF attorneys filed Tuesday with the U.S. Supreme Court in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration on behalf of four medical organizations and four doctors. The brief urges the high court to keep in place a U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit decision that restored critical safeguards to chemical abortion drugs while the lawsuit proceeds:

“The FDA should have to answer for the damage it has done to the rule of law and the harm it has caused by putting politics ahead of the health of countless women and girls. The agency failed to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is, and it unlawfully removed every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions. The Fifth Circuit rightly required the agency to prioritize women’s health by restoring critical safeguards, and so we have urged the Supreme Court to keep that accountability in place.”

The 5th Circuit’s order prohibits the distribution of 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 ten 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 the opportunity to detect ectopic pregnancies and other dangerous contraindications, and brought back the requirement that abortionists must follow-up with women for complications after a chemical abortion. The 5th Circuit also agreed with ADF attorneys that the FDA’s approval of generic mifepristone was unlawful.

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.

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