Action Alert!

Blocking Biden Administration’s mail order abortion pills

By Robert G. Marshall ( bio - articles - email ) | Apr 22, 2021

In July 2020, citing the Covid-19 emergency, a federal District Court judge unilaterally suspended the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirement that women seeking chemical abortions were required to appear in person at a hospital, clinic, or medical establishment to personally pick up the lethal drugs and sign a disclosure form.

The Trump Administration challenged that federal District Court and on January 12, 2021, the U. S. Supreme Court overruled the federal District Court stating that federal courts, “owe significant deference to the politically accountable entities with the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health.” The effect of the ruling resulting from the Trump Administration’s challenge was that abortion pills could not be mailed but had to be given in person.

Rosary carrying Joe Biden, whom NBC describes as a “devout Roman Catholic,” within less than three months of his inauguration, allowed acting FDA Commissioner, Janet Woodcock, MD, on April 12, 2021, to authorize mail order abortion pills! The lethal “cocktail” consists of two pills: Mifepristone to block progesterone to the womb needed to maintain the pregnancy; and Misoprostol to contract the uterus and expel the deceased child.

It is my hope that this Biden Administration policy can be reversed with sufficient citizen outrage and lobbying. It is bad enough our Supreme Court has allowed the destruction of at least 50 million pre-born Americans, but now we face an even “easier” manner of killing life and love.

Democrat presidents promote abortion pill

Three Democrat presidents played critical roles in fostering the use of self-administered chemicals to end the life of American children before birth. Bill Clinton arranged for chemical abortion approval and manufacturing in the U.S. by ordering the FDA in 1993 to bring the French abortion pill to America under FDA’s import regulations.

By working with the Population Council, a private organization, the Clinton Administration got around the potential blocking by Congress of funds to promote mail order chemical abortions, similar to the Hyde Amendment blocking federal funding of Medicaid abortions.

Under Clinton, the FDA regulations required the abortionist to accurately date the pregnancy, rule out ectopic pregnancy, provide for surgical abortion if the Pill did not kill the preborn child, and return to the abortionist to confirm the operation “successfully” killed the child.

Under the Obama Administration (with Joe Biden as Vice President) the FDA decided that only one abortion Pill was necessary to kill the preborn child and a woman did not need to confirm that the abortion was “successful.” A “licensed physician” was not needed to prescribe the abortion pill; any “healthcare provider who prescribes” was allowed to order the abortion chemicals and women could use the chemicals until 70 days gestation, up from 49 days. Further, abortionists were not required to report complications, only deaths, to DANCO, the abortion Pill manufacturer. Deaths of the aborted children were, of course, not reported.

For women, abortion is only safe on paper

By not collecting, compiling and reporting the host of complications from abortion pills to the drug manufacturer DANCO, the abortion pill could appear safe, at least on paper. With little or no complication data, of course, surgical and chemical abortion will appear safe for women.

The tactic of “see no evil” with regard to abortion complications originated even before the 1973 Roe decision. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) never developed a system to identify and report abortion complications because that would not be in the interest of the “abortion is safe” agenda. “Safety” was actually the primary reason the Supreme Court legalized abortion in the first place! Pro-abortion litigants and amici were cited by the Court in footnote 44 to affirm

medical data indicating that abortion…prior to the end of the first trimester, although not without its risk, is now relatively safe. Mortality rates for women undergoing early abortions, where the procedure is legal, appear to be as low as or lower than the rates for normal childbirth.

(But comprehensive abortion safety data, including the period after the abortion, was not collected and reported.)

A few years after the Supreme Court decisions, a fake abortion complications reporting system was developed that was so inefficient, it simply perpetuated the “safe abortion” sham.

The Centers for Disease Control did request abortion complication data from the early 1970s through 1988, but only complications that occurred at the time the abortion was performed, basically when under the knife. Hospital emergency rooms, or other health care providers not associated with performing the actual abortions, were not required to report abortion complications they treated even though these physicians were more likely to treat complications that occurred shortly after the abortion.

The complication data was thus so miniscule that the CDC dropped its collection after 1988 and only asked state health departments to compile the number of abortions (no complications) performed in their state.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute, the research arm of the Susan B. Anthony List, was highly critical of the FDA’s mail order abortion decision, concluding the following:

  • Many studies show chemical abortions have four times the complications as surgical abortions;
  • Without physician oversight, women will not know about the possibility of reversing the abortion process;
  • The FDA decision will lead to major increases in black market abortion pill sales and women taking abortion pills without their knowledge or consent.

For example, mail order abortion pills make it easier for boyfriends to kill their unborn children by giving pills to their unsuspecting girlfriends, and there is no age restriction on who can order the pills. How many parents will not even know that their minor children took mail order abortion pills, and therefore not be able to inform medical workers when emergencies occur?

What abortion really is

The September, 1970, issue of the professional medical journal, California Medicine, carried a very insightful editorial on the loosening morals of Western culture, most poignantly expressed in the growing ambivalence towards legal abortion:

The traditional Western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and equal value of every human life…. This ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage and has been the basis for most of our laws and much of our social policy…. The process of eroding the old ethic and substituting the new…may be seen most clearly in changing attitudes toward human abortion. …[A]bortion is becoming accepted by society as moral, right and even necessary.
Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra or extra-uterine until death. …[T]his schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while a new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected.

Why oppose mail order abortions now?

Some may question why we should object to mail order abortions, when legal abortion itself is the problem?

Pope John Paul II, in his March, 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae, directed at legislators but applicable to American citizens who are the ultimate lawmakers under the U. S. Constitution, answered:

A particular problem of conscience can arise in cases where a legislative vote would be decisive for the passage of a more restrictive law, aimed at limiting the number of authorized abortions, in place of a more permissive law already passed or ready to be voted on. Such cases are not infrequent. …[W]hen it is not possible to overturn or completely abrogate a pro-abortion law, an elected official, whose absolute personal opposition to procured abortion was well known, could licitly support proposals aimed at limiting the harm done by such a law and at lessening its negative consequences at the level of general opinion and public morality. This does not in fact represent an illicit cooperation with an unjust law, but rather a legitimate and proper attempt to limit its evil aspects. [73]

Chemical abortion pills, sent by mail, even to minors, without parental or informed consent, without a medical exam to determine the gestational age of the preborn child or to rule out a tubal pregnancy or twins, is a recipe for harm to women, preborn children and society as a whole. The Biden Administration must be held accountable for such a radical abuse of power using Covid-19 as an excuse. Christian pastors, religious leaders, and those who believe that human life is sacred must educate others and vehemently oppose these government efforts to snuff out life and the love that naturally ensues from the intimate and rewarding relationship between mother and child.

Action item

Aside from prayer, penance and fasting for our country’s return to adherence to the “Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” Virginia’s James Madison, fourth president of the United States and Father of the Constitution, suggested the following about funding restrictions to effect good public policy:

This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure. [Federalist, Number 58.]

Please urge your U.S. Congressman and two U.S. Senators to cut off any FDA funding to implement Joe Biden’s abortion-by-mail policy.

If you are represented by a pro-abortion Congressman or Senator, write to them anyway, as their non-response, or negative response, will enable you to educate others about their position or even rudeness if not responding. Spreading this information on social media will undermine these pro-abortion politicians in the public eye.


CatholicCulture.org is not a political action organization but, in furtherance of its Catholic mission, authorizes free distribution of this analysis of political initiatives which violate a Catholic understanding of the human person. For those unfamiliar with how to contact their Senators and Representatives, we also provide the following public link:


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Bob Marshall served 26 years in the Virginia House of Delegates and was the chief House sponsor of the 2006 voter-approved Virginia Marriage Amendment and a ban on late term abortion. He recently wrote Reclaiming the Republic: How Christians and Other Conservatives Can Win Back America (TAN Books). Previously, he co-authored Blessed are the Barren, a social history of Planned Parenthood (Ignatius Press). Finally, don’t miss Bob’s Civics Lesson for Catholics in the Catholic Culture Podcast Episode 17. See the full bio.

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