Congress Must Confront the Abortion Drug Cartel
Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins sent a letter Tuesday to members of the GOP in the U.S. House and Senate, calling on Congress to prioritize “an abortion drug cartel” now operating in the United States following the Biden Administration’s change in health and safety standards for Chemical Abortion Pills as well as changes in many state laws.
SFLAction has been a leading force against the distribution of the deadly pills, beginning with California’s push to force them onto publicly funded college and university campuses. Since then, SFLAction has worked to pass legislation nationwide at the state level, as well as engaging in innovative approaches in Congress, such as the Protecting Life on College Campuses Act. As reported this morning in the Washington Post, supporting abortion access is “no excuse for allowing networks to form intent on selling drugs illegal or regulated in some states.”
To learn more about the deadly drugs, visit This is Chemical Abortion.
The letter, distributed to Congress, reads as follows.
Dear Members of Congress,
A shocking new report details how the Biden Administration’s obsession with death by elective abortion has created an abortion drug cartel at the Mexican border, another crisis that Congress must prepare to address after the election. As the Washington Post recently observed in an article: “a growing army of activists is funneling pills from Mexico into states that have banned abortion.”
Given the stakes for American women, Students for Life Action and the Pro-Life Generation call on Congress to demand that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigate and prevent drugs crimes that include abortion pills, as well as requiring a new environmental impact study by the FDA and EPA given the widespread use – including illegal use – of pills sold to cause death by abortion. When Congress reconvenes, addressing an emerging abortion pill cartel must be a priority.
As with other drugs prohibited by states, Chemical Abortion Pills carry a tremendous risk for women, exposing them to injury, infertility, and even death. The willingness of President Biden along with Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and FDA Commissioner Dr. Robert Califf to risk the lives of women exposed to Chemical Abortion Pills requires a congressional response as the dereliction of duty taking place on this issue is astounding.
Abortion Extremism
As noted in an op-ed that Sen. Steve Daines and I wrote for Newsweek:
The Biden administration’s abortion extremism was on full display when, as we predicted … in an online event, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided to stop enforcing critical in-person health and safety requirements for the chemical abortion drug mifepristone … . Consider that on the same day news was breaking about the gutted health and safety standards for chemical abortion, the FDA also announced it was pulling the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine because, out of 7 million people who had taken it, six had suffered blood clots and one person died.
Yet despite the fact that chemical abortion pills have been a factor in the deaths of more than 20 women and millions of unborn children, Biden’s FDA not only kept the drugs on the market, but authorized, in effect, a nationwide experiment in do-it-yourself abortions. There was no semblance of an ‘abundance of caution’ in the FDA’s abortion pill announcement.
A Life and Death Issue for Women
The Biden Administration’s willingness to risk women’s lives in their zeal to end preborn life must be confronted by a Congress that cares about this life and death issue for both the preborn and women.
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As deadly as the two-pill regiment that the FDA allows can be, the Chemical Abortion Pills sold at the border can carry an even greater risk as some will sell only one pill, saving them money but raising the risks.
Considering those dangers, Charlotte Lozier Institute recently released a report by Senior Fellow and Director of Medical Affairs Ingrid Skop (M.D., F.A.C.O.G.) titled, “Induced Abortion with Misoprostol Alone.”
Evidence from around the globe demonstrates that misoprostol alone is a poor abortifacient and very likely to cause injury to women … . As an example of how poorly misoprostol alone functions to cause abortion, a 2010 study comparing standard mifepristone/misoprostol with misoprostol alone documented that using misoprostol only to induce an abortion led to a 23.8% failure rate requiring surgery.
The embryo/fetus continued to survive in 16.6% of the pregnancies, and misoprostol is known to produce birth defects such as Moebius Sequence, associated with craniofacial and limb abnormalities, leaving these children at risk if the pregnancy continued to birth. In contrast, there were 3.5% failures and 1.5% continuing pregnancies in the mifepristone/misoprostol group … .
Finally, a worldwide systematic review of more than 12,000 misoprostol abortions, performed by abortion advocacy researchers, found 22% (nearly one in four) required surgical completion because misoprostol failed to completely empty the uterus of the remains of the child. (Emphasis added.)
A 500% Increase in Emergency Room Visits
Another study from the Lozier Institute found that “(t)he rate of abortion-related emergency room visits following a chemical abortion increased over 500%.”
A factor in such visits could be the tainted products being sold. Skop writes, “One study on the feasibility of obtaining abortion drugs from international distributors over the internet found in some cases misoprostol tablets contained only 17% of the advertised amount of medication.”
That reality is echoed in the Washington Post article:
Some experts worry that as demand soars and cross-border networks expand to include less credible suppliers, women could start to receive illegitimate pills that are ineffective or, worse, dangerous. Fake abortion pills have been circulating in other countries with strict antiabortion laws, said Guillermo Ortiz, an OB/GYN and senior medical adviser with Ipas Partners for Reproductive Justice, an international abortion rights nonprofit.
The Cemetaries in Our Sewers
One need only look at other drug cartel efforts to understand the tremendous risk to women who may not be taking the drugs they think they ordered and may not survive the experience, not to mention the impact on the preborn. Such a strain on our healthcare system and such risk to women and children demands a Congressional response including an investigation of the environmental impact of the emerging cemeteries in our sewer systems.
The Washington Post article notes that the preborn can come into the world wholly formed, with one woman distributing acid to dissolve the tiny bodies, others flushing them into the wastewater system, or perhaps carrying out a hasty burial of small human body. The environmental impact of this rush to distribute Chemical Abortion Pills must be studied by a Congress that cares more about public safety than an ever-rising number of deaths by abortion.
Even if you support abortion – and I don’t – that’s no argument for the dangerous, no test, online distribution of Chemical Abortion Pills as allowed by the Biden Administration. And it’s no excuse for allowing networks to form intent on selling drugs illegal or regulated in some states. Students for Life Action will be prioritizing this issue – now the number one cause of elective abortion deaths in America. In January, the Pro-Life Generation expects the House and Senate to take on this issue with the seriousness it deserves, rather than settling for show votes on easily agreed upon legislation that does not significantly reduce the number of abortions or protect women from a predatory abortion industry.
Sincerely,
Kristan Hawkins
President, Students for Life Action
Students for Life Action (SFLAction), a 501c4, along with its 501c3 sister organization, Students for Life of America (SFLA), make up the nation’s largest pro-life youth organization and a political and policy operation engaging people of all ages. Together they work to end abortion — the human rights issue of our day — and provide political, legal, and community support for women and their children, born and preborn.
