A total of 147 Republicans in the United States Congress, including 23 senators and 124 members of the House of Representatives, filed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to deny an emergency application from the Biden administration’s FDA to stay an order by the United States District Court that stayed FDA approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.
Noting that the FDA approved and then deregulated chemical abortion drugs, thus failing to follow Congress’ drug approval process and subverting Congress’ public policy interests in upholding patient welfare, the brief pointed out that the FDA in 2016 “eliminated any requirement that adverse non-fatal medical events resulting from chemical abortion be reported to the FDA, then claimed in its 2021 revision that the absence of reported complications demonstrated that chemical abortion was safe.”
“Congress has also decreed that abortion-inducing drugs are ‘nonmailable matter’ by the United States Postal Service and common carriers, protecting women and girls from the heightened risks of mail-order chemical abortion drugs,” the brief added. “In spite of this, the FDA has approved and deregulated chemical abortion drugs. The ‘chemical abortion pill’ (also known as a ‘medical abortion’) is a regimen of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol.
Mifepristone starves pregnancies, while misoprostol causes the uterus to contract, which triggers the uterus to expel the fetus and placenta.
“The FDA’s actions have contravened these federal laws, and, accordingly, have violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA),” the brief said. “The FDA must also adhere to the APA’s ‘arbitrary and capricious’ standard, which means ‘the agency must examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action including a rational connection between the facts found and the choice made.’”
The U.S. House Committee on Government Reform’s Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources has stated, “The integrity of the FDA in the approval and monitoring of RU-486 has been substandard and necessitates the withdrawal of this dangerous and fatal product before more women suffer the known and anticipated consequences or fatalities.”
The brief hammered the FDA, stating, “Imagine that an agency compiles studies about how cars perform when they have passive restraint systems, like automatic seatbelts. . . . For nearly a decade, the agency collects those studies and continues studying how cars perform with passive safety measures. Then one day the agency changes its mind and eliminates passive safety measures based only on existing data of how cars perform with passive safety measures. “
“A 2021 peer-reviewed study showed alarming results; chemical-abortion related emergency room visits (i.e., visits medically coded as chemical abortion complications) per 1,000 abortions ‘went from 8.5 to 51.7, an increase of 507%” over thirteen years,’” the brief asserts.