With Robert Califf now in charge, the FDA is likely to promote dangerous chemical abortions. The pro-life movement must fight back.
With Robert Califf now in charge, the FDA is likely to promote dangerous chemical abortions. The pro-life movement must fight back.
T he confirmation of Dr. Robert Califf as commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is the latest example of President Biden’s extreme commitment to promoting abortion on demand, no matter the human cost. While Califf’s nomination ultimately did prevail, the abortion issue deprived the Biden team of an easy path to victory. And since personnel is policy, the debate did much to expose the FDA’s role in expanding mail-order abortion drug use.
The abortion industry has been pushing for years to turn post offices and pharmacies across America into abortion centers. That push has kicked into overdrive since the Supreme Court announced it would hear the Dobbs case, the biggest legal challenge yet to Roe v. Wade. “The abortion pill” (Mifeprex) actually involves two drugs: mifepristone, which stops the unborn baby from absorbing the nutrients it needs to survive; and misoprostol, which induces labor to expel the body of the dead child. This is the workaround pro-abortion activists envision for a post-Roe world, with bureaucrats like Califf rubber-stamping their agenda.
Chemical abortions often occur in private homes far away from medical supervision, meaning women are left to self-abort and cope with any harrowing complications — including potentially life-threatening bleeding or infection — on their own. Those in the abortion industry tout this as providing “convenience,” not mentioning that the wide availability of such dangerous drugs also boosts their profit margins, reduces the need for brick-and-mortar facilities, and allows them to wash their hands of responsibility for the patient far more easily.
Why is it likely that Robert Califf will make all of this worse? His record in the same position in the Obama administration he now holds in the Biden administration tells us all we need to know.
The FDA is supposed to make data-driven determinations to protect the public, but with Califf at the helm under President Obama, the agency failed at its job. With Califf’s approval, the FDA stopped collecting data on the harmful effects of chemical abortion drugs for anything other than fatal events. At that time, 75 members of Congress questioned this decision, which lacked any obvious scientific justification but had plenty of obvious political ones.
As a result, the FDA’s data are woefully inadequate, shrouding the true risks of chemical abortion in greater secrecy. One team of medical experts found that there were over 500 “uncodable” events because of inaccurate data.
Ironically, during his confirmation hearing, Califf promised to let the data guide FDA decisions about mail-order abortions when his own actions have made that virtually impossible.
The science is out there if the administration would heed it. Decades of real-world data, as opposed to surveys cherry-picked by the abortion lobby, provide ample evidence that abortion drugs are unsafe. As the use of these drugs has grown, from about one-third of U.S. abortions in 2016 to 44 percent in 2019, so has the danger to women as well as unborn children. One recent study of more than 400,000 abortions found a 500 percent increase in the rate of emergency-room visits following a chemical abortion since the early 2000s, shortly after the FDA first approved Mifeprex (the same study showed there were 35 ER visits for every 100 abortions in 2015).
Another group of researchers found that approximately 60 percent of chemical abortions are miscoded as miscarriages. Although the authors concluded that the FDA’s data on chemical abortion are inadequate and likely underestimate the number of complications, they still identified 2,000 serious events, including 500 life-threatening events and 20 deaths, as a result of chemical abortions over 20 years.
Using an even more comprehensive data set, researchers in Finland found that “the overall incidence of adverse events was four times higher in the medical compared with surgical abortion cohort,” contradicting claims that abortion pills are more benign than Tylenol.
Instead of pumping the brakes to address these issues, the Biden administration is ignoring inconvenient data and weakening safeguards even further. Given Califf’s track record, there is little doubt he will permanently authorize mail-order abortion drugs and work to implement Biden’s pro-abortion agenda.
Since the FDA can’t be trusted to “follow the science” and prioritize public health and safety over abortion industry profits, pro-life leaders in the states and Congress must act. In the last year, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, and Texas have enacted state-level safeguards against abortion drugs, with additional states considering action. A positive outcome in Dobbs could free them to protect millions more lives.
Meanwhile, the entire movement must educate Americans about these dangerous drugs and provide life-saving options like abortion-pill reversal, which has saved thousands of babies after their mothers regretted taking the first pill. The Biden administration is sure to fight us, but we owe it to every woman and unborn child.