Lankford Breaks Down Chemical Abortion Case with Lead Attorney, OBGYN

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WASHINGTON, DC – The Office of Senator James Lankford (R-OK) today released the latest episode of The Breakdown with James Lankford focusing on an FDA decision that impacts the health and safety of women and girls—chemical abortion. Last month, both the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. US Food & Drug Administration released decisions halting the FDA rule that allows for chemical abortion drugs to be distributed with minimal health and safety standards. That decision was stayed by the Untied States Supreme Court while litigation continues in the lower courts. Lankford is joined by one of the attorneys in the case, Erik Baptist, with Alliance Defending Freedom, and Dr. Donna Harrison, M.D., chairman of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.

Lankford and his colleagues filed amicus briefs at both the district and appellate court levels in support of the Alliance of Hippocratic Medicine’s challenge to the FDA’s rule allowing for women and girls to have access to mifepristone, an abortion drug, without consulting a doctor in person.

Excerpt:

Lankford: Set the context for us, when people hear terms like chemical abortion, or medical abortion, or do-it-your-self abortion, or mail-in abortions. We’ve heard all these different terms on it. People say to me, ‘I don’t really know what that really is,’ so help people understand what is this two-drug cocktail—what is it? Where did it come from? And, what are the very real risks that are out there?

Dr. Harrison: …It is really important that people understand the reality behind this case and not some of the incredibly deceptive spin…

The problem is, as you get further and further in pregnancy the mifepristone and the misoprostol work less and less. So at seven weeks, after the first day after her last menstrual period, she has a one out of 20 chance of needing a surgery to compete her abortion. But if she is 13 weeks…then she is going to have a one out of three chance of needing a surgical abortion. So, the problem with this willy nilly access without ever seeing a doctor is that she never gets an accurate due date. She never gets an accurate age of the pregnancy, and without that accurate age of the pregnancy there is no way she can have adequate, informed consent—which is the right of every women to have adequate, informed consent prior to a procedure. So without having a sonogram knowing how far along she is, she won’t know if she will have a one in 20 chance of surgery. Or a one in three risk of surgery.

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