With the Trump administration under fire from pro-life organizations for the Food and Drug Administration’s alleged slow-walk of a promised review of an abortion drug’s safety – one even demanded Commissioner Marty Makary’s firing – Senate Republicans tried to steer the blame back to familiar territory: prior Democratic presidents.The Obama and Biden administrations’ weakening of mifepristone’s regulatory structure, by removing requirements to report non-fatal adverse events, then in-person dispensing after the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in Dobbs, was front and center at a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing Wednesday.
The Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life research group akin to the abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute, published new research half an hour before the hearing on a flood of abortion pills into the U.S. coinciding with the Biden FDA’s removal of in-person dispensing.
“Unregulated international online pharmacies will ship abortion drugs to all 50 states, and most don’t require prescriptions or consultations before shipping,” raising the risk of “forced and coerced abortions” since medical oversight is also missing, the report says.
“Community abortion drug networks often provide loose, unmarked pills and place no gestational limit on how late in pregnancy the drugs may be ordered,” raising questions about “drug quality” and the risk of complications such as “complete abortions,” it also says.
GOP senators, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist Monique Wubbenhorst recited similar dangers and harms from the regulatory change, as Democratic senators and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow Nisha Verma, another OBGYN, blamed post-Dobbs abortion restrictions for any harm.
The hearing went off-subject occasionally. Vaccine-cheerleading pharma favorite Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., contrasted reporting requirements for a post-inoculation “sore arm” with none for non-fatal mifepristone incidents, and two Republicans seized on Verma’s adherence to gender ideology to discredit her bona fides as a doctor and scientist.
After tearfully recounting cases she prosecuted and heard as a judge involving abortion pills administered by deception or coercion, Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., asked Verma out of nowhere “can men get pregnant?” When Verma paused, Murrill and Wubbenhorst each answered no and told Moody there’s no justification for prescribing the pills to men.
Verma distinguished between the women and “people with different identities” she treats when Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., repeatedly asked her whether men can get pregnant.
“Yes-no answers are a political tool,” she answered when Hawley said he was trying to establish “biological reality” and noted the Supreme Court just heard two cases on the meaning of “sex.”
It was the second consecutive day of such a showdown, with Justice Samuel Alito going viral Tuesday for asking a plaintiff’s lawyer, in a challenge to Idaho’s law banning males from girls’ sports, how the high court can determine discrimination on the basis of sex if the lawyer can’t even define “boy” and “girl.”
“I think you’re trying to reduce the complexity” and “conflating,” Verma said as Hawley interrupted her, apparently distinguishing between “men” as a gender and “males” as a sex. “This isn’t hard, doctor,” Hawley said: “I don’t know how we can take you seriously” as a “person of science” on mifepristone’s safety profile, when Verma advances a “political agenda.”
