On Thursday, the largest and most influential conservative caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives hosted a roundtable of congressmen to address the ongoing crisis of the proliferation of the abortion drug mifepristone across the country, as dispensing of pills from unregulated websites continues to allow virtually any individual to obtain them without medical oversight.
Since the Supreme Court handed down its Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade four years ago Wednesday, allowing dozens of states to establish laws protecting unborn babies, abortions have nonetheless almost doubled in the U.S. due to the abortion pill, which is being shipped from dozens of domestic and international vendors across state lines in violation of dozens of state pro-life laws. All of this is occurring under the nose of the Trump administration, which has so far not taken any action to reinstate safety protocols surrounding mifepristone that were rescinded by the Biden administration, including the requirement that the pills be dispensed in-person.
As a result, a humanitarian crisis has unfolded as dozens of vendors ship out mifepristone to any individual without verifying that they are, in fact, a pregnant woman or if their baby is past the point of the 10-week gestational limit set by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This has led to an alarming number of women being “blindsided” by the severe effects of the pill on their bodies and being forced to witness the death of their children in a toilet. It has also led to a growing number of predatory men obtaining the drug and forcing women to take it without their consent.
Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are beginning to sound the alarm. The Republican Study Committee (RSC) convened a roundtable on Thursday to explore ways to address the crisis. Rep. Sheri Biggs (R-S.C.), a board-certified nurse practitioner and mental health practitioner, kicked off the meeting by describing how minors are obtaining the drug without their parent’s knowledge.
“[M]any of them take the pill alone without guidance, no in-person exam by a physician or health care provider. Their parents don’t even know. And sometimes it has life-changing results. And I think that’s astonishing as a parent,” she emphasized. “And we’ve made it far, far too easy. Aside from the point that we’re taking the life, we don’t realize the psychological impact. … I know the impact that it can have on individuals for a lifetime, [which] can be overwhelming, and we don’t even see that. We don’t even talk about that. And it’s really scary.”
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) furthered the discussion by pointing out that adverse health events related to mifepristone, which have been independently verified to occur for at least 11% of women, go virtually unreported.
“There’s a guy named Willard Cates who ran the abortion surveillance at CDC for five years, made a very powerful statement. He said, ‘You know what? Nobody will report adverse events, not Planned Parenthood, not [any]body else, because it’s like turning yourself into the IRS. They’re just not going to do it. So women will die. Women will be very, very seriously harmed. We’ll never hear about it because it’s all one big fat cover-up. And that continues to this day.”
Smith also noted that 175 congressmen, “including our entire leadership, wrote to [HHS] Secretary Kennedy and [FDA Commissioner] Makary, who was then FDA commissioner … saying, ‘Please, President Trump and your administration, step up right now to protect women from this horrible drug that is hurting them so egregiously.”
Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-Minn.) emphasized that the work of pregnancy resource centers is vital in combatting the scourge of abortion and mifepristone.
“What we are talking about is helping mothers and children,” she underscored. “We’ve been fighting for life. … We’re trying to give them hope and support because so much of the time they’re forced into these abortions, and the chemical abortions just add to that, with the coercion, with the sex trafficking, with potentially family or a boyfriend pushing them into this. And this just makes that worse because they are able to do it through the mail in private. And what we are trying to do as pro-lifers is really surround the woman with love and support so she has that ability to choose life because so much of the time, so much of our society is pushing them here — ‘Abortion is an answer.’ And now it’s even, ‘You can do it in private, and it’s all great.’ But it really does leave … a lifetime of scars … and so what we are trying to do is make sure that they are surrounded by love and that they understand that there’s support, there are options.”
“Part of the legislation that I’ve [sponsored] is with crisis pregnancy centers, because they are local, they are there on the ground helping women through these things,” Fischbach added.
Rep. Mark Messmer (R-Ind.) went on to note that there are currently no federal laws prohibiting an individual from giving abortion drugs to an expectant mother without her consent.
“One of the most heinous crimes that are committed [with] abortion drugs is knowingly giving them to a woman without her consent and causing her child to abort,” he observed. “… There’s no specific federal parameters on punishing someone who secretly gives abortion drugs to a woman without her consent. H.R. 6466, the Forced Abortion Prevention and Accountability Act, establishes a 25-year prison term for administering an abortion drug to a woman without her consent. It also has penalties for shipping by mail or otherwise an abortion drug without taking reasonable steps to verify that the person asking for it is a woman that’s pregnant.”
Messmer cited the recent case of a man in Washington who “received just a one year and one day sentence for assaulting a woman, raping her, and then administering misoprostol to her without her consent, causing her to lose her child — a one year sentence for murder. … If you assault a woman who’s pregnant and kill her child, in most states, that’s considered murder. Well, why isn’t this?”
Rep. Robert Aderholt (R- Ala.), who serves as chairman of the RSC’s Values Action Team (VAT), noted the significance of the timing of the RSC’s efforts. “This week, as we celebrate the fourth anniversary of the Dobbs decision, I think it’s a good time that we sit down and discuss this, and we talk about the commitment to defending every human life — and especially as we look toward this issue of [the] chemical abortion crisis. … I’m glad that we can be one voice among many that tries to raise concerns about this.”
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.
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