“The FDA recklessly removed its original safeguards that provide women with in-person, ongoing care when taking abortion drugs,” she said. “Because they removed those, they put women’s lives in danger.”
“We sued the FDA on behalf of doctors to hold them accountable, and we’re asking the Supreme Court to reinstate those vital safeguards to protect the health and safety of women across this country,” Fiodorek indicated.
“The FDA’s own label says that roughly one in 25 women who take these drugs will end up in the emergency room,” Fiedorek continued. “So regardless of what people’s beliefs might be about abortion, we should all agree that women deserve the ongoing in-person care of a doctor when they’re taking high-risk drugs.”
The FDA first approved mifepristone for abortion in 2000 but included some restrictions on dispensation to prevent severe side effects. One restriction was that the drug had to be prescribed and dispensed in person.
That changed in 2021 when the FDA decided that the in-person requirement put a “burden on the health care delivery system.”
Over the years, other restrictions on the drug have also been removed. In 2016, the FDA determined that the drug can be used when a woman is pregnant with a child at 70 days’ gestation. Before 2016, the gestational limit was seven weeks. The FDA also decided in 2016 that non-physicians could prescribe the pill.
In August 2023, the Fifth Circuit Court affirmed a lower court ruling that the FDA must reinstate the restrictions on the mifepristone pill that were in place before 2016. Those restrictions are currently on hold pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision.
America’s Catholic bishops expressed concern about chemical abortions. In a February statement, the bishops noted that if the FDA policies are allowed to remain in place, “potentially harmful drugs [will] be mailed directly to girls and women who did not see a medical professional in person and may be injured or killed without public knowledge of the cause.”
“I would like everybody to remember that this is an extremely powerful drug, and women deserve ... to be treated with respect and with the safeguards in place,” Gillette said. “We’re worth it.”
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.