Representative Jim Banks of Indiana is passionate about life, and about protecting women’s health. Recently, Rep. Banks and other House members wrote a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concerned about efforts of pro-abortion activists and supporters to increase the availability of the abortion pills without medical oversight. It’s part of a dangerous and growing trend.
Having a medical or chemical abortion is advertised as something that is easy and safer than Tylenol. But none of that is really true. As seen in the Abby Johnson film, Unplanned, completing a medical abortion can be a traumatic experience. The abortion pill process, which requires two pills, mifepristone and misoprostol, is often a messy and painful affair. The first drug, mifepristone, denies the preborn baby the essential nutrient progesterone and is supposed to kill the baby. About 24-48 hours later, a woman takes misoprostol, which helps the uterus contract and forces a woman to undergo what is essentially an unnatural miscarriage. (You can read a personal story from a pro-abortion website about a woman who had a medical abortion and describes the multiple blood clots and the severe pain she experienced. Warning, this may be disturbing to some readers.)
The process is not 100% effective nor is it without complications. One study showed that about one in five women have such a serious reaction to the medication that they try to contact a medical center to confirm if their symptoms are normal. Others can have much more serious complications, including hemorrhage, infection, incomplete abortion, failed abortion, uterine rupture and, in rare cases, death. In addition to the abortion pills themselves, women are also given strong pain medication (sometimes narcotics), anti-nausea meds and one woman reported being given anti-diarrhea pills to help them manage the various symptoms.
In order to protect women and make sure they remain fully informed about the risks that they are taking—the abortion pill protocol requires a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS). Rep. Banks and other congressmen are concerned that the current REMS will soon become ineffective as abortion activists encourage the FDA to abandon this essential protection and basically make the abortion pill an over-the-counter drug.
“Planned Parenthood and other abortion advocates have recklessly called for the removal of REMS for mifepristone,” Rep. Banks said in a statement to The Daily Citizen. “These restrictions are the only thing standing in-between on-demand access to an abortion drug that is proven to have serious and even deadly side effects for women – in addition to the tragedy of aborting an unborn child. I am proud to stand for life and call on the FDA to strengthen these essential protections.”
In 2016, physicians are only required to report to authorities if a death occurs after taking the abortion pill and not the myriad of complications that can occur. This shouldn’t be too surprising, as abortion reporting policies in the United States are nonexistent. No abortion business in the country is required by law to provide their abortion numbers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The annual abortion surveillance report is entirely voluntary, with individual clinics reporting to the state and the data then compiled and sent to the CDC (it also runs several years behind). California, the most populous state, does not report its numbers.
Pro-life congressmen are taking this opportunity to ask the abortion industry to remain accountable to the people. For far too long, organizations like Planned Parenthood and others have been granted the opportunity to deceive the public by simply being allowed to operate with little monitoring or reporting. The case of Dr. Ulrich Klopfer, the Indiana abortionist who had the remains of 2,246 preborn babies at his home in Illinois, is proof that this industry needs much more government oversight.
Hopefully, this letter achieves the desired result and the abortion pill remains something that only a physician can dispense and prescribe.
Photo from Robin Marty via Flickr
