In a way, it is surprising that it took so long.
The Secretary of Health and Social Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., finally accessed the anti-abortion movement, alerting last week the prosecutors general republican that the Food and Drug Administration began an examination of the “security profile” of Miffepristone.
“HHS – Through the FDA – conducts its own examination of evidence, including the results and evidence of the real world, concerning the safety and efficiency of the drug,” he wrote in a letter dated September 19. “Given the 2016 FDA decision to eliminate the certified prescribers to report the opposite events of non -fatal Mifeprists.
He cited a “study” produced by a right -wing reflection group – which is not examined by peers and refuses to publish his underlying data – saying that a in 10 patient who takes miferepristone suffers from serious side effects. The Republicans have developed on this study, rushing for a reason to turn the FDA against the drug in abortion.
In reality, the FDA has long been used to unnecessarily restrict Miffepristone, under democratic and republican administrations. It was only recently, and went largely by the Pandemic COVID-19 and a major trial, some of these expensive restrictions began to rise. This recent and extremely significant progress is now in danger, because Kennedy promises to use the levers of the federal government to go back in time at a time when mifepristone is difficult – if not impossible – to be obtained.
In 1989, a year after France approved the drug for use, the FDA prohibited its import. President Clinton ordered that the medication was studied when he took office, and he finally obtained authorization from the FDA in 2000 for use up to seven weeks of pregnancy.
Eleven years later, the FDA has put the drug as part of an assessment and risk attenuation strategy (REM), which means that it can only be administered in a hospital or a clinic. Less than three percent of the FDA regulated drugs have been placed under a REMS, and most of them are opioids.
In 2016, the FDA extended the window in which the mifepristone could be taken at 10 weeks and required less trips to the supplier.
In 2020, as a large part of American life closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, patients still had to make visits in person to obtain a sure and efficient proven medication. The ACLU continued its doors before the Federal Court and won an injunction in temporarily break the distribution requirements in person, allowing mifepristone to be legally sent by post. The FDA of President Biden announced shortly after it stops enforcing the requirement in person and allowed the certified pharmacies to provide the drug – a maritime change by bringing mifepristone in the field of consumer medicine. These changes were formalized and made permanent in 2023.
The number of drug abortions, therefore, has increased and has remained high despite the Supreme Court Dobbs decision, which overturned the right to an abortion. The administration systems have appeared across the country, allowing patients to the abortion bans to obtain the medication.
Job-Dobbs Disputes have been concentrated almost exclusively on drug abortion, which anti-abortion activists recognize as the greatest obstacle to the eradication of the procedure. The Supreme Court resumed an attempt to remove the authorization of the FDA from the drug in 2024, noting that the anti-abortion doctors who brought the pursuit. This case is back in the court of judge Matthew Kacsmaryk (himself an adverse anti-abortion fanatic), where red states are trying to replace anti-abortion doctors.
But prosecution is not sufficient for the increasingly unreal anti-abortion movement: their allies control the White House, after all. Why not just use administration machines to restrict mifepristone out of accessibility?
Kennedy finally reacts. By relying on the false study, the FDA could decide that mifepristone is unusually dangerous and reimposed distribution requirements in person, which makes it impossible for patients in the red state to legally obtain the drug. It could go even further and try to completely withdraw the approval of Mifepristone.
If this is the case, this will only be the last chapter of the agency’s refusal to treat mifepristone as if it made apolitical drugs, preventing the Americans from the necessary health care because some people in this country do not like abortion.
