Pence: SCOTUS Needs to Overturn Mifepristone Ruling

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Former Vice President Mike Pence says the Supreme Court should overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone.

Pence made his comments in a column posted by the Washington Examiner on Tuesday.

“The Food and Drug Administration was established to protect public health by ensuring the safety of medicine,” he said. “Tragically, when the FDA illegally approved the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone, it abdicated this duty in the name of promoting abortion.

“This week, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to right that historic wrong.”

Pence claimed the FDA “illegally” approved the drug in 2000 “under rules that allow the agency to approve drugs that provide meaningful therapeutic benefits over existing treatments for serious and life-threatening illnesses, such as AIDS. Pregnancy, of course, is not an illness, and abortion is not a treatment.”

He maintained chemical abortions are more dangerous than those abortions done by surgery.

“The rates of death from abortion pills are four times higher than that of surgical abortions,” he said. “As of December 2022, 32 deaths have been reported as a direct result of mifepristone. Studies have shown that 10% of women who use mifepristone require follow-up medical treatment for a failed or incomplete abortion and 20% will experience adverse effects such as hemorrhaging or infections. “

In the decades since the FDA approved mifepristone, the agency “has continually placed women’s health at greater risk by further loosening restrictions regarding the use of the drug,” he noted.

Pence said during the Obama administration in 2016, the FDA “abandoned multiple safety protocols put in place when the drug was originally approved, including raising the maximum gestational age allowed for use from 7 weeks to 10 weeks.

“In 2021, the Biden administration made things worse by eliminating the requirement to meet in person with a healthcare provider, thereby allowing mifepristone to be prescribed through telemedicine,” he said.

Because of this move by Biden’s administration, fewer pregnant women have the chance for an ultrasound, “which is critical in identifying the gestational age of the baby and in ruling out an ectopic pregnancy and other significant risks to the mother,” he noted.

The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments this week in a case that seeks to correct “the grave mistake made by the FDA,” Pence said.

And he added, “Now the Supreme Court can remind the agency’s left-wing ideologues that America is still a nation of laws. I encourage the court to reverse the FDA’s illegal approval of mifepristone and make a clear and unmistakable stand for women’s health and the right to life.”