In a letter to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), pro-life organizations are requesting that the agency shut down two websites that are illegally selling the abortion pill to American women from foreign pharmacies.
There are two websites selling the abortion pill online, AidAccess and Rablon. These businesses allow women to bypass U.S. safeguards and prescribe Mifepristone and misoprostol, which are part of the chemical or medical abortion process, without ever being physically examined by a physician. Each website received warning letters in March 2019 from the FDA, which stated, “The sale of misbranded and unapproved new drugs poses an inherent risk to consumers who purchase those products…FDA requests that you immediately cease causing the introduction of these violative drugs into the U.S. commerce.”
But despite that warning, the websites haven’t stopped.
Several pro-life groups, including Susan B. Anthony, Students for Life, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Americans United for Life, March for Life and Live Action among several others, are raising the alarm and signed a letter requesting that the FDA take action.
In part, the letter reads, “We are writing to urge you to seize the website domains for AidAccess, Rablon, and any other entities illegally prescribing and/or selling mifepristone in the United States, and to further investigate their practices. Just as the FDA acted in December 2019 to protect Americans from websites advertising the sale of illicit vaping cartridges, we urge FDA to protect women from the distributors of abortion-inducing drugs who place lives at risk by circumventing your agency’s regulator safeguards.”
The abortion drug Mifepristone is identified by the FDA as a REMS or Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies drug, which is a system designed by the agency to help regulate and manage certain high-risk drugs. Medical offices that use a REMS drug like Mifepristone in the U.S. must follow strict guidelines when prescribing it to patients. Organizations in other countries do not have abide by those guidelines.
“We urge the FDA to protect American women from dangerous abortion drugs entering the U.S. market illegally from overseas. AidAccess, Rablon, and the abortion radicals who operate these illegal pill-mills jeopardize women’s health and safety every day they continue to operate,” Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. “Chemical abortion drugs pose a serious risk of potentially life-threatening complications. Research shows as many as five to seven percent of women who undergo chemical abortions will require follow-up surgery. While the abortion industry and its allies promote these drugs as the safe, easy, near painless way to have an abortion, the truth is that women have experienced intense pain, severe and heavy bleeding, and even death as a result of chemically induced abortions. As our nation responds to the COVID-19 pandemic, we hope to see the FDA step up enforcement of the commonsense regulations they have already put in place to mitigate the expansion of these dangerous drugs.”
As the coronavirus pandemic grows, it makes it even more important to put a halt to these illegal enterprises that put women at risk by prescribing dangerous drugs outside the safety net of the FDA.