A new report from the Society for Family Planning suggests that there are now somewhere between 130,000 and 150,000 abortions per year in states that have enacted heartbeat protections, or further protections, for the unborn. Many pro-life states are apparently on track to have more abortions within their borders each year than they did under Roe v. Wade.
To be clear, this is not due to out-of-state travel. It’s the result, in large part, of a Biden-era Food and Drug Administration regulation allowing abortion drugs to be dispensed over the internet, without an in-person exam, and mailed to anyone in the country capable of filling out an online form.
While the first Trump administration required commonsense safety standards for the prescription of abortion drugs, the Biden administration removed almost all of them, including a requirement that they only be dispensed in person. Now, nearly a year into President Donald Trump’s second term, inaction from Dr. Marty Makary and the FDA means the Biden rules, not Trump’s, remain in effect.
The resulting regime bears little resemblance to medicine. Online sellers ship abortion drugs into pro-life states without requiring so much as a phone call. The process can be completed via an online form and submitted via email.
Deeply pro-life states such as Texas are effectively governed by online drug vendors operating in whichever blue state has the fewest regulations. In some pro-abortion states, non-doctors can prescribe the drugs.
Online providers advertise that they will send abortion drugs to women through up to 14 weeks of pregnancy, though activists provide instructions for how to use the drugs beyond 18 weeks. Of course, providers can’t actually perform an in-person exam to determine the baby’s age. Nor can they rule out significant health risks to the mother, determine whether the woman is actually pregnant, or even determine whether the person filling out the form is a woman.
A week before this new report’s release, an Ohio man was indicted on charges of ordering abortion drugs online using his estranged wife’s identity and allegedly force-feeding them to his pregnant girlfriend. She went to the ER, bleeding, and her child died. Sadly, this is not an isolated case.
The FDA could undercut this dangerous system whenever it wants by reinstating the requirement that abortion drugs be dispensed in person by doctors. It would take no act of Congress, no new study. It could have been done on Day One of the new administration.
But the administration has failed to act. It’s unclear what it is waiting for. Again, former President Joe Biden’s FDA rule is facilitating the deaths of more than 130,000 babies each year in states with strong pro-life laws. That’s more than the number of overdose deaths each year, nationwide, from opioids and all other drugs combined. That’s more than the number of children from birth to age 19 who die by any circumstance each year in the United States.
FDA Commissioner Makary has given no timeline for when, if ever, the Biden regulations will be repealed. He suggests he’s waiting for a completed study of the overall safety profile of abortion drugs. But this study hasn’t progressed beyond the data collection phase, and he doesn’t know when it will.
There are even concerning reports that the FDA might delay action until after the midterm elections next year. If true, Makary is taking a huge political gamble with Americans’ lives, which is not remotely within his job description.
Nor is it even smart politics. Trump’s own pollster found 71% of voters, including most liberals, support in-person dispensing. It doesn’t take a new study to know that selling lethal drugs online is dangerous.
The FDA’s failure means pro-life laws made possible by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization victory are being largely nullified. Without real national safeguards, the “states-only” approach to pro-life legislation is illusory.
PRO-LIFE SOLD OUT FOR A SEAT AT TRUMP’S TABLE. NOW IT’S OUT IN THE COLD
Agency bureaucrats may celebrate this result, but it’s unacceptable in a pro-life administration. Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance should be rightly proud of pro-life states’ work to protect the unborn and mothers in the Dobbs era; their FDA shouldn’t let Biden’s rules block life-saving progress. Each month of delay means thousands more deaths in Texas, Iowa, South Carolina, and other states with strong pro-life protections on paper.
Whatever the reason, the delay in repealing Biden’s abortion drug rules makes it clear Makary is incapable of effectively leading the FDA. Either he is choosing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives based on faulty political judgment, or he is being played by forces within the FDA hoping to undermine Trump’s signature pro-life achievements. Neither is acceptable. Makary must go.
Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.