Pro-life org: Informed consent for abortion pill impossible without doctor visit

By Tate Rosentreter
The Center Square

The nation’s largest pro-life organization filed an amicus brief Thursday in the U.S. Supreme Court asserting the impossibility of ensuring informed consent without an in-person doctor’s visit as it relates to the abortion pill, since anyone can order the drug online.

President of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America Marjorie Dannenfelser told The Center Square that her organization’s brief “highlights how impossible it is to ensure the right to informed consent in this unregulated Wild West environment” surrounding the abortion pill.

Dannenfelser said that “anyone – male or female, adult or minor, pregnant or not pregnant – can order these inherently dangerous drugs online, anonymously, have them shipped anywhere in the country, and even stockpile them.”

“For years, the abortion industry has planned on mail-order abortion drugs to do an end run around pro-life protections as a backstop when Roe v. Wade was reversed,” Dannenefelser said.

“The Biden-Harris administration was all too happy to abet them, using Covid as an excuse to get rid of basic safeguards like in-person doctor visits,” Dannenfelser said.

“Abortion drugs are the sole product of the manufacturers filing to block these safeguards from being reinstated, and they want to keep their profits rolling in,” Dannenfelser said.

“Never mind the harm that women like Rosalie Markezich and their babies suffer every day as a direct result of FDA policy that prevents states like Louisiana from enforcing pro-life laws,” Dannenefelser said.

In its amicus brief, SBA asks the Supreme Court “to reject abortion drug manufacturers’ bid to block in-person medical evaluations from being reinstated pending appeal,” according to an SBA release.

The brief states that informed consent cannot be obtained “without in-person care to adequately screen for coercion and potential severe health risks to individual women,” the release said.

“Two separate, independent studies also found more than 1 in 10 women experience at least one severe adverse event, such as hemorrhaging, infection or sepsis,” the release said, and that “women have died after taking abortion drugs.”

SBA said in the release that “peer-reviewed research found three quarters of ER visits within 30 days after abortion drug use were coded as severe or critical.”

SBA stated that “public opinion is firmly on the side of commonsense health and safety standards” and that “diverse polls consistently find Americans strongly oppose mail-order abortion drugs and want to reinstate in-person medical evaluations, including majorities of Independents, Democrats and liberal voters.”

As The Center Square has reported, various polls have shown that 70% of American voters think a doctor’s visit for the abortion pill should be required, with one of the polls having surveyed a majority of pro-choice voters.

“By failing to require in-person contact between prescribers and their patients, FDA’s 2023 REMS cannot ensure that vulnerable women and adolescents are protected from coercive partners and predators – further eroding the ability of women to make independent, voluntary decisions to use mifepristone,” SBA’s brief stated.

Dannenfelser told The Center Square: “We’re proud to stand with 23 states, as well as 113 members of Congress spearheaded by Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana and Republican leaders in the House and Senate, in asking the Supreme Court to deny the abortion industry petition and ensure that the cases of coercion, violent abuse, poisoning, severe injury and death we’ve documented do not continue to grow while this case continues.”