While pro-lifers continue to cheer the closure of major abortion hubs around the country, Planned Parenthood’s brick-and-mortar hardships only tell part of the story. No one can dispute that years of prayers, hard work, marching, and lobbying have started to put the hurt on the industry of death, but there’s a catch. In the middle of funding cuts and boarded-up buildings is a very sobering reality: today’s abortion is just a postage stamp away.
As heartening as it is to see the world shifting under Planned Parenthood’s feet, the business built on the backs of taxpayers has a contingency plan. And that contingency plan is turning abortion into a tiny and dangerous weapon that can be shipped to anyone, anywhere. Incredibly, living in a pro-life state doesn’t change that.
While the Supreme Court was right — and years overdue — in overturning the flawed Roe v. Wade ruling, the biggest mistake people made after 2022 was thinking the abortion question was solved. Far from it. If anything, Dobbs only inflamed the tensions boiling under the surface. As the headlines are starting to make quite clear, it’s only exposed the explosive divides between red and blue states. A divide, unfortunately, that empires like Planned Parenthood continue to exploit.
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As Family Research Council’s Mary Szoch explained, “The Comstock Act very clearly states that no abortion-inducing object or drug may be sent through the mail. It’s written right there in federal law. The Biden administration looked at that, and they said, ‘You know, we will only enforce that as narrowly as possible.’” Now, years later, the country is learning the hard way, it hasn’t been enforced at all. And it’s time, Szoch and millions of other Americans argue, “for the Trump administration to stand up and say, ‘Every Biden policy has to go, especially those ones that endanger life.’”
Last week, dozens of Baptist leaders from 22 states joined that rally cry, calling on the White House to step in and clean up the mess that Biden made of federal law. As 40 of them wrote in a letter delivered to the president, “We respectfully urge your immediate action to stop the mail-order distribution of the abortion drug mifepristone, which now accounts for more than 60% of all U.S. abortions. Enabled by the previous administration’s rollback of FDA safety protocols, this dangerous drug has caused serious adverse events in nearly 11% of users and poses grave risks to women — especially when dispensed without in-person screening or ultrasound evaluation.”
Their stand comes as the man widely considered the most pro-life president in history continues to send mixed signals on abortion. And unfortunately for conservatives, one of the biggest gray areas is also one of the most dangerous: chemical abortion. While Trump’s leadership is undeniable in the appointment of pro-life judges, the overturning of Roe v. Wade, expanding the Mexico City Policy, and temporarily defunding Planned Parenthood, there’s much more that needs to be done — not just in ending the lawless racket of abortion pill distribution but also in ensuring the drugs are safe to begin with.
As experts across the country continue to point out, mifepristone was only approved by the Clinton administration in the year 2000 because the process was politicized. “So the first thing that we’re calling for is for the FDA to completely reexamine the approval of mifepristone. Women and unborn children will not be safe from this drug until that approval is revoked,” Szoch insisted on “Washington Watch”. Until then, she said, “We’re asking the FDA to reinstate the original 2000 safety precautions for the drug and to strengthen those by including an ultrasound requirement. The ultrasound requirement would allow the pregnancy to be accurately dated,” helping doctors rule out ectopic pregnancies.
“Ectopic pregnancy only occurs in 2% of pregnancies,” Szoch explained, “but it results in 13% of maternal deaths. If a woman takes mifepristone and she has an ectopic pregnancy, she might confuse the severe cramping and bleeding she’s feeling for the side effects of mifepristone, when really it’s a life-threatening complication from the ectopic pregnancy. So we really want to ensure those 2000 [regulations] are strengthened if they’re added back. And of course, those include in-person visits with the physician.”
Although the new FDA chief Marty Makary says he has no current plans to change the guidelines for the abortion drug, he did promise to be open-minded and “continue [listening] to folks that say they have concerns” about the drug.
For now, though, it shouldn’t be too much to ask that the Trump administration — which cares deeply about ending Biden-era lawlessness in other areas — aggressively defend the Comstock Act. If this is, as the president continues to suggest, a “state issue,” then surely states’ policies on life should be respected, not undermined by activist doctors in places like New York.
Just in the past few days, a father sued a California abortionist for mailing mifepristone to his girlfriend in Texas — in direct defiance of Lone Star law. The case accuses the doctor of violating the Comstock Act in a first-of-its-kind “wrongful death” suit. Similar challenges are cropping up all over the country as couples grapple with the ease of taking innocent life — with or without both parents’ knowledge. Some of the more sinister stories, like Catherine Herring’s, involve abusive husbands or boyfriends who tricked their pregnant significant others into taking mifepristone against their will, a nightmarish scenario that stronger regulations could help prevent.
Even for those women who take it knowingly — believing the industry’s lies that it’s an “easier” abortion — the horrors are unlike anything they could imagine. “[The blood ] — it looked like I was sitting in the middle of a crime scene. I suppose it was a crime scene. I mean, I had just murdered my child … But this couldn’t be normal. Planned Parenthood didn’t ever tell me this could happen. … I decided that I would call them in the morning … if I didn’t die before then.” Abby Johnson’s story is sadly typical.
She tells her testimony now of the terrifying 12 hours she spent lying on the bathroom floor. She explains the eight weeks of blood clots. Eight weeks of nausea. Eight weeks of excruciating cramps. Eight weeks of heavy bleeding. “I had seen too many women … hurt by this ‘natural’ abortion method. There was nothing natural about it.” When she asked her Planned Parenthood coworkers why they weren’t telling women what really happens, her supervisor said, “Well, we don’t want to scare them.”
And for what? So that the abortion industry can make more money. They don’t care about women. They’re putting tens of thousands of them at risk, “shipping it across state lines to pro-life states and in direct violation of those states’ rights to protect unborn children,” Szoch shakes her head.
“This drug is extremely harmful,” she continued, pointing to the more than one-in-10 women who experience “sepsis, hemorrhaging, infection, incomplete abortion that requires surgery, [or a follow-up] ER visit after taking this drug.” That’s “shockingly high,” she stressed. “This drug is extremely dangerous, and it should not be approved by the FDA.”
Which is why Baptist leaders “respectfully request” that President Trump do three things: “1. Restore and strengthen FDA safety protocols for mifepristone, including an ultrasound requirement; 2. Direct the FDA to reevaluate the drug’s approval; and 3. Instruct the Department of Justice to enforce the Comstock Act, to protect states’ rights to uphold pro-life laws.”
“You know,” Dr. Will Hall, director of the Office of Public Policy at the Louisiana Baptist Convention, told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Tuesday, “There are 12 states that have totally banned all abortions.” Forty-one have some form of protection for unborn lives in place. “And this letter will help us put that last piece of the bulwark in place that will help us to stop the illegal abortions [happening] in our states … We don’t want our women and children being exposed to telemedicine appointments for abortions with out-of-state partners.”
As leaders like Hall made quite clear to Trump, “Women, unborn children, and the rule of law urgently need your leadership.”
Originally published at The Washington Stand.
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer for The Washington Stand. In her role, she drafts commentary on topics such as life, consumer activism, media and entertainment, sexuality, education, religious freedom, and other issues that affect the institutions of marriage and family. Over the past 20 years at FRC, her op-eds have been featured in publications ranging from the Washington Times to The Christian Post. Suzanne is a graduate of Taylor University in Upland, Ind., with majors in both English Writing and Political Science.
