Better Living Through Chemistry
Here’s a term that gins up the Pro-Life crowd — Chemical Abortion.
Just like “Fetus” became “Pre-Born” and “Late -Term Abortion” became “Partial Birth Abortion”, Chemical” as opposed to “Medication Abortion” gets the crowd riled up and the donations pouring in.
Chemical (or medication) abortion involves two drugs: mifepristone followed by misoprostol. From 2000 through 2022, almost 6 million women in the U.S. used mifepristone to end a pregnancy. How safe is it? In those 6 million cases, there were all of 32 deaths (including for reasons unrelated to the drug) and a little more than 1,000 hospitalizations.
That sounds pretty safe unless you are a Republican running for re-election. A Trump-appointed judge in Texas and a Trump-appointed Circuit Appeals Court there ruled that mifepristone was not safe enough. 124 Republicans in the House of Representatives and 23 GOP senators submitted a brief to the Supreme Court urging it to affirm that Circuit Court’s ruling.
Clearly, those judges and congressmen have more pharmacological knowledge than the FDA . The 5,990,000 non-injurious dosages of mifepristone over 22 years must have been a coincidence.
Will the current Supreme Court with six Republican-appointed justices delve into their encyclopedic knowledge of pharmacology and invalidate 22 years of experience? They invalidated fifty years of safe, legal abortions just last year, so it might be a good idea to stock up on mifepristone now.
But we can’t have women (especially those in “red” states) using “chemical abortion” without being sent to prison until the Supremes get around to outlawing that nasty pill. Let’s haul out that chestnut from 1873, the Comstock Act. It bars using the US mail to send materials that “corrupt the public morals”.
Nine Republican senators equated mifepristone with child porn and depictions of beastiality as corrupters of public morals when they sent a letter to major drug-store chains warning that they could be held in violation of the Comstock Act not only if they ship abortion drugs to consumers but even if they use the mail or other freight carriers to deliver the drugs to their own stores.
The Biden Crime Family’s (as they are known on Fox News) Justice Department took time out from persecuting poor little Donnie to issue an opinion that the Comstock Act does not forbid mailing FDA-approved pharmaceuticals. Of course, that opinion is currently being litigated in Trump-appointed courts.
If you are the CEO of Walgreen’s, would you take the risk of stocking mifepristone in an election year when Trump is running neck and neck with Biden? Would you avoid a Federal lawsuit to provide relief for women with an ectopic or other non-viable pregnancy? We may find out. I wouldn’t count on it, though.
By Ed Dufton
