FDA Commissioner Marty Makary and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised lawmakers a safety review. However, Bloomberg News has reported that the review is delayed. According to them, Makary told agency officials to delay the safety review until after the midterm elections.
Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council (FRC), said in a press release that, if this is true, it is problematic.
"We need drug policies based on facts, not politics," said Perkins. "Abortion pills account for almost two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S."
Kelsey Pritchard, communications director for SBA Pro-Life America, was not surprised to hear of a delay.
"It's just a pattern from what we've seen from Commissioner Makary, unfortunately, from approving a new generic version of the abortion drug that will kill more unborn children to leaving a Biden rule in place that allows for the mail-order of abortion drugs into states that have pro-life laws," Pritchard tells AFN.
Earlier this year, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) found that almost 11% of women experienced a severe adverse health event after taking the abortion pill. These experiences include sepsis, infection, and hemorrhaging.
As a result of this study, EPPC said the FDA should "immediately reinstate its earlier, stronger patient safety protocols to ensure physician responsibility for women who take mifepristone under their care, as well as mandate full reporting of its side effects."
The Biden-Harris administration eased mifepristone restrictions prior to the EPPC study's findings, hence the call for "earlier, stronger patient safety protocols." EPPC also called on FDA to "further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women" and, based on objective safety criteria, to reconsider its approval altogether.
Critics of the EPPC study have called it flawed, but Pritchard said that it is accurate.
"The same time the EPPC study came out, a group, Restoration, rolled out a very similar study that found the same thing, that as many as 11% of women suffer serious adverse effects like hemorrhaging, infection, and sepsis," informs Pritchard. "There is a whole body of research out there that the abortion lobby tries to deny and get people to look the other way, but it's very clear that abortion drugs are not safe for women."
Citing the safety of women and babies, Tony Perkins is now encouraging the FDA to "conduct a timely, thorough scientific review of mifepristone" and end the Biden-era abortion drug policy that "ignores the health risks and denies states the right to protect the unborn.”
