Washington D.C., Apr 15, 2020 / 16:00 pm
More than 150 members of Congress have written to the Food and Drug Administration in support of continued regulation of chemical abortions. The legislators wrote to the FDA Tuesday, in response to calls to expand access to at-home abortions during the pandemic.
The letter, sent April 14 to FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn, M.D., was signed by 121 members of the House and 38 senators. It calls on the FDA to keep the mifepristone-misoprostol chemical abortion regimen on the administration's Risk Evalutation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS) list. The list is reserved for drugs of special concern.
"We write to urge you to continue to robustly enforce the REMS for medication abortion and end dangerous runarounds of these protections under the guise of medical research," the letter states. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) led the letter in the Senate, while Rep. Robert E. Latta (R-Ohio) led the letter in the House.
The FDA allows for chemical abortions, but requires that a certified prescriber dispense the two drug regimen of RU-486 and misoprostol after confirming the gestational age to be not more than 10 weeks and ruling out an ectopic pregnancy. The mother must also sign and keep a copy of the prescriber's agreement.