The Biden administration on Tuesday released a five-step plan to prevent America from killing unborn babies through abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week.
Insider reports Xavier Becerra, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, revealed the plan at a news conference in Washington, DC, including efforts to thwart state law banning mail-order abortion drugs and to train doctors and pharmacists on how to refer of abortions.
“Increasing access to this drug is a national necessity and in the public interest,” Becerra said, accusing the Supreme Court of creating a “moment of crisis in the health care system.”
The former California attorney denounced the court’s decision to allow states to once again protect unborn babies from abortion, calling it “despicable” but “predictable,” according to Fox News.
The Biden administration has said it wants to make abortion drugs available “as far as possible”.
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“At HHS, we will leave no stone unturned,” Becerra said. “All options are on the table. We will do everything we can to reach patients and care providers within the law’s legal limits.”
Here’s more from Insider:
[First,] Becerra promised his office would work with federal law enforcement agencies to ensure states can’t ban abortion pills, as some Republican-led states have tried to do — though it’s unclear how the laws would be enforced as drugs are shipped by mail.
Becerra said that federal offices would also send healthcare providers information about misoprostol and mifepristone drugs. But he stopped saying that any medical provider should offer the abortion pill when a reporter is asked about the possibility.
Instead, he said the HHS planned to remind federal health care programs that the law requires them to provide abortion pills to patients who want them after cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancies.
Second, the Biden administration wants to ensure doctors and pharmacists are trained to refer patients for abortions. Third, according to the report, it plans to remind Medicaid providers that federal tax dollars can be used to pay for birth control and emergency contraception.
Fourth, Becerra said he had told the Office of Civil Rights to ensure that medical information remains private and that patients are not discriminated against for wanting to have an abortion.
And fifth, the HHS secretary said his office is exploring ways to use the Emergency Medical Treatment Act to potentially expand abortions.
“There is no magic bullet,” he added. “But if we can do something, we will find it and do it at HHS. That was the instruction I received from the President of the United States.”
The Biden administration believes mail-order abortion drugs are one way America can continue to abort unborn babies, even in states that protect their lives by law.
In response to the Supreme Court ruling, President Joe Biden promised Friday to ensure that the abortion drug mifepristone remains available to women “as much as possible”.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland also cited the abortion drug on Friday when he promised the Justice Department “will work with other branches of the federal government that want to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care,” reports the A.P.
“In particular, the FDA has approved the use of mifepristone,” Garland said. ““States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment regarding its safety and efficacy.”
However, this appears to contradict the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which restores states’ rights to make decisions about abortion and the rights of unborn babies.
Mifepristone is used to abort unborn babies up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. It blocks the hormone progesterone and starves the baby to death. For decades, the FDA required that abortionists provide the drug in person after a medical examination because of its high risks. In December, however, the Biden administration abolished the personal requirement and began selling the drug through the mail. Now abortion drugs can be bought online without seeing or speaking to a doctor.
The FDA has linked the abortion drug to at least 26 deaths among women and 4,000 serious complications between 2000 and 2018. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA has stopped requiring nonfatal complications from mifepristone to be reported. So the numbers are almost certainly much higher.
New data and studies suggest the risks of the abortion drug are far more common than abortion activists claim, with as many as one in 17 requiring hospital treatment. Another study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the number of abortion-related emergency room visits by women using the abortion drug increased by more than 500 percent between 2002 and 2015.
According to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute, the abortion drug is used in more than half of all abortions in the United States. In 2020, the drug was responsible for 54 percent of all abortion-related deaths of unborn babies, up from 39 percent in 2017, the pro-abortion research group found.