Biden Administration Puts Abortion Industry Profits Over Women's Safety | Opinion

Far from governing as a unifying president, Joe Biden has pushed a radical abortion agenda that places profits for the abortion industry above the health and safety of women. The Biden administration's abortion extremism was on full display when, as we predicted this week in an online event, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided to stop enforcing critical in-person health and safety requirements for the chemical abortion drug mifepristone.

This decision puts politics over science, risks women's lives and future fertility and creates a deadly new market for do-it-yourself abortions online and by mail. This is a disaster in the making for millions of women across America who can now be sold life-ending drugs and abandoned to whatever happens next.

The Biden administration's chemical abortion gambit also reveals a deep hypocrisy. Consider that on the same day news was breaking about the gutted health and safety standards for chemical abortion, the FDA also announced it was pulling the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine because, out of 7 million people who had taken it, six had suffered blood clots and one person died. Yet despite the fact that chemical abortion pills have been a factor in the deaths of more than 20 women and millions of unborn children, Biden's FDA not only kept the drugs on the market, but authorized, in effect, a nationwide experiment in do-it-yourself abortions. There was no semblance of an "abundance of caution" in the FDA's abortion pill announcement.

Far from being a safe and easy way to end a precious preborn life, chemical abortion pills lead to complications four times as frequently as surgical abortion. Pregnant mothers need to be screened in person for ectopic pregnancy and the age of their baby, as well as for blood type, because women's fertility can be lost if they are Rh-negative and go untreated after an abortion. They must also be examined after taking the chemicals because of the risk of infection from an incomplete abortion. And they need to be protected from abusers who have given such drugs to women without their knowledge and consent.

joe biden
U.S. President Joe Biden pauses while speaking about the March jobs report in the State Dining Room of the White House on April 2, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

False arguments about "access" ignore the need to be certain that when deadly chemicals are sold, people won't be harmed. We don't allow people to self-diagnose cancer, order chemotherapy through the mail and then start self-treating. The life-and-death stakes make examination and careful care and follow up essential.

Even if you support abortion, risking women's lives, health and future fertility to make it easier to sell such drugs through the mail doesn't help women. It profits the abortion industry, which is now able to save on personnel, testing and brick-and-mortar costs.

For years, pro-life members of Congress have been fighting in court against the abortion industry's reckless campaign to keep the abortion pill from being held to basic medical standards. They are also advocating for legislation, like the Support and Value Expectant (SAVE) Moms and Babies Act, to codify these standards. Students for Life and SFLAction have been fighting the distribution of the pills on college campuses as well as in more than ten states and counting.

Numerous states, including most recently Montana, are also fighting back to protect women from dangerous do-it-yourself abortions. Many more states should follow suit.

We cannot allow the COVID-19 crisis to be exploited to create an entirely new, and completely preventable, health crisis through mail-order, do-it-yourself abortions. President Biden must abandon this radical abortion agenda and call on his administration to enforce health and safety standards for chemical abortion pills, to prevent some women from paying the price of death, injury or infertility for a quick sale of chemical abortion pills. If he does not, the legacy of the Biden administration will be the loss of life.

Senator Steve Daines represents Montana and is the founder and chairman of the Senate Pro-Life Caucus. Kristan Hawkins is president of Students for Life of America and SFLAction, with more than 1,250 groups in all 50 states. Follow her @KristanHawkinsand subscribe to her podcast, Explicitly Pro-Life.

The views expressed in this article are the writers' own.

Uncommon Knowledge

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Sen. Steve Daines and Kristan Hawkins


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