Just because something is legal, does not mean it is safe. Some agendas are just that powerful. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Biden presidency rolled back most safety precautions on the abortion pill in recent years, leading to a significant increase in its use and greater risk to women. The U.S. Supreme Court will decide if that was effectively a purely political move, and those safety precautions should go back into effect.

The Court heard oral arguments in the case last week and the decision could come down to whether the doctors who brought the case against the FDA have standing. If not, it won’t matter at this point if the FDA was wrong, the case will die without a decision on wrongdoing, leaving the loose standards in place and girls and women at risk.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorney Erin Hawley represented a group of health care professions in U.S. Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. The doctors argue they have to participate, against their consciences, in abortions that have gone wrong because of the abortion pill and the loose standards.

Over the past eight years, the FDA has arbitrarily removed most of its own safety standards on the abortion pill, including the crucial doctor visits to rule out a potentially deadly ectopic pregnancy and other serious conditions, as well as allowing the abortion pill to be sent through the mail.

The FDA admits that one in 25 women who take the abortion pill end up in the emergency room. Doctors blame the lack of safety precautions for their needed involvement in the ER where they have to sometimes complete the abortion.

CAP signed an amicus brief to the Supreme Court arguing the FDA unlawfully removed its own safety precautions, leaving women to dangerous self-managed abortions, “The FDA’s relaxation of its own safety requirements for mifepristone use is arbitrary and capricious, sending vulnerable women to the emergency room, and causing other significant adverse effects. This gross disregard for women’s health must stop.”

Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) also filed two amicus briefs arguing the FDA unlawfully allowed the abortion pill to be sent through the mail in violation of the Comstock Act. A second brief argued the removal of safeguards on the abortion pill was politically motivated and part of a larger effort to undermine state laws by weaponizing the federal government to promote abortion.

But at the end of oral arguments, it seemed clear that the case may not be decided on merit but on standing. Al Mohler put it this way, “It appears that there is a strong likelihood that a majority on the court will rule that the parties did not have standing, and thus that the court will never actually rule on the abortion pill and its availability, or the FDA and its responsibility at all.”

Several news reports signaled the same outcome with headlines reading, “Most Supreme Court Justices Seem Skeptical…” and “Supreme Court signals it’s likely to continue allowing mifepristone abortion pill access.”

The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research group, says the abortion pill is used in 63% of abortions in the U.S. In the unlikely event the Court strikes down the FDA’s dangerous move to loosen safety precautions, it could have a significant impact on the number of babies being aborted and save women from the physical and emotional harms of abortion.

The Court could hand down its ruling any time before the end of June.

ICYMI

• Read here how the Minnesota Lieutenant Governor posted a March Madness abortion bracket – and got flamed on social media.
• Read here about an apparent decline in religious practices. A new survey shows more than half of Arizonans never or rarely attend church.
• Read here how a Flagstaff elementary school is holding a pro – transgender “name change” clinic for all ages on school grounds.