(Editor's Note: The following opinion column contains graphic descriptions, which some readers may find disturbing.)
OPINION
In August of last year, a federal appeals court again rebuked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for endangering the health, safety, and welfare of women and girls.
And now, with the U.S. Supreme Court set to hear the case on March 26, the FDA is seemingly digging in its heels and continuing to defend its reckless actions.
As an obstetrician and gynecologist who has personally and professionally challenged the FDA’s removal of essential safety standards for chemical abortion, I was pleased with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit’s ruling in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
In the case, filed by attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom, the court held the FDA accountable for unlawfully eliminating crucial safeguards for women and girls who take abortion drugs, and the Supreme Court should do the same.
Indeed, regardless of one’s opinion on abortion, anyone who cares about women’s health should be encouraged if the Fifth Circuit’s ruling is allowed to stand because women deserve the in-person care of a doctor when taking high-risk drugs.
And chemical abortion drugs are inherently high-risk — even more so when doctors are not required to provide in-person visits and physical exams to check women for ectopic pregnancies, as well as severe bleeding, life-threatening infections, and other complications that can result from chemical abortions.
Because of the FDA’s less-than-responsible removal of essential safeguards, the physical distance between a woman requesting one of these drugs and the person dispensing it prevents any medical examination from taking place.
The FDA doesn’t even require a doctor to be involved, and you can’t perform an ultrasound via Zoom.
Without an ultrasound, it’s not possible to know for sure how far along a woman is in her pregnancy. The need for surgical intervention increases as the baby’s gestational age increases, so accurate gestational age is crucial — but non-existent in the FDA’s no-doctor-visit, mail-order abortion scheme.
Without an ultrasound or exam, there’s also no way of making sure the early pregnancy is not in the woman’s fallopian tubes (an ectopic pregnancy).
Even Planned Parenthood acknowledges that being "checked out by a doctor is the only way to know for sure if you have an ectopic pregnancy," and yet the FDA no longer requires doctors to even see women who take abortion drugs in person.
Instead, it allows women to take these drugs knowing that when an ectopic pregnancy is rupturing, the pain and bleeding the woman experiences is exactly like the pain and bleeding from a chemical abortion.
In other words, taking abortion drugs could mask the symptoms of a woman’s rupturing ectopic pregnancy and prevent her from seeking emergency medical treatment for life-threatening bleeding.
She may well find herself in a life-threatening situation alone in her bedroom, dorm room, or bathroom floor, far from an emergency room and with no medical backup.
How many women have been injured, killed, or traumatized by chemical abortions?
No one knows for sure.
That’s because no one — including the FDA — has meaningfully tracked the complications and deaths resulting from this drug regimen. In fact, the FDA removed a previous requirement that prescribers report non-fatal adverse events.
A woman could almost bleed out and find herself in need of resuscitation multiple times, yet the FDA does not want to know about her traumatic experience.
But the Supreme Court will know.
As one brief filed with the Court in support of our case related from one woman who took these abortion drugs, "Within one hour I knew that everything the doctor had told me was a lie.
"I was bleeding so heavily, I believed I was dying. I was passing clots the size of baseballs, and I was in the worst physical pain of my life, worse than childbirth.
"The worst part of my experience was when I was sitting on the toilet, and I felt myself pass a clot that felt strange. I looked into the toilet and saw my baby. It had a head, body, and tiny arms and legs."
Or this story from another woman, "When the cramps became unbearable, I made my way to the bathroom. I locked the door and experienced the most severe pain I had ever felt in my life. I sat on the toilet and bent over in pain.
"I grabbed a towel to bite on in order to keep from screaming and was nearly passing out. As I got up, I saw blood everywhere. I saw parts of my baby, an image I will never be able to erase from my mind."
The FDA’s own label states that roughly one in 25 women who take abortion drugs will end up in the emergency room.
Women deserve better from the FDA.
That’s why doctors are holding the FDA accountable for repeatedly ignoring its most basic responsibilities to women.
We hope that the Supreme Court will require the FDA to put women’s health first and allow the Fifth Circuit’s most recent decision to stand so that it can save countless women from harm.
Dr. Donna Harrison is chairman of the board for the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and former CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.