Insider reports U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra unveiled the plan at a press conference in Washington, D.C., including efforts to thwart state legislation banning mail-order abortion drugs and to train doctors and pharmacists on how to refer for abortions.
“Increasing access to this drug is a national imperative and in the public interest,” Becerra said, while accusing the Supreme Court of creating a “moment of crisis in health care.”
The former California lawyer slammed the court’s decision to allow states to protect unborn babies from abortion again, calling it “despicable” but “predictable,” according to Fox News.
The Biden administration has said it wants to make abortion drugs available “to the fullest extent 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 within the legal limit of the law to reach patients and support providers.”
Here’s more from Insider:
[First,] Becerra vowed his office will work with federal law enforcement agencies to ensure that states cannot ban abortion pills, as some Republican-led states have tried to do — though it’s unclear how the laws would be enforced given that pills are sent through the mail.
Federal offices also will be sending information to healthcare providers about the medications, called misoprostol and mifepristone, Becerra said. But he stopped short of saying that every medical provider should offer the abortion pill when asked about the possibility by a reporter.
Instead, he said HHS planned to remind federal healthcare programs that they must, by law, provide abortion pills to patients who want them following cases of rape, incest, or life-threatening pregnancies.
Second, the Biden administration wants to make sure doctors and pharmacists are trained on how to refer patients for abortions and, third, it plans to remind Medicaid providers that federal tax dollars may be used to pay for birth control and emergency contraception, according to the report.
Fourth, Becerra said he told the Office of Civil Rights to make sure medical information remains private and patients are not discriminated against for seeking abortions.
And fifth, the HHS secretary said his office is exploring ways to potentially use the Emergency Medical Treatment Act to expand abortions.
“There is no magic bullet,” he added. “But if there is something we can do, we will find it and we will do it at HHS. Indeed, that was the instruction I received from the president of the United States.”
The Biden administration believes mail-order abortion drugs are a way America can keep aborting unborn babies even in states that protect their lives under the law.
On Friday in reaction to the Supreme Court ruling, President Joe Biden promised to make sure the abortion drug mifepristone remains available to women to “fullest extent possible.”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland also mentioned the abortion drug Friday when he promised that the Justice Department will “work with other arms of the federal government that seek to use their lawful authorities to protect and preserve access to reproductive care,” the AP reports.
“In particular, the FDA has approved the use of the medication mifepristone,” Garland said. “States may not ban mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy.”
However, this appears to contradict the Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which restores the rights of states to make decisions about abortion and unborn babies’ rights.
Mifepristone is used to abort unborn babies up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. It blocks the hormone progesterone and basically 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 got rid of the in-person requirement and began allowing the drug to be sold through the mail. Now, abortion drugs can be purchased online without ever seeing or even speaking to a doctor.
The FDA has linked the abortion drug to at least 26 women’s deaths and 4,000 serious complications between 2000 and 2018. However, under President Barack Obama, the FDA stopped requiring that non-fatal complications from mifepristone be reported. So the numbers almost certainly are much higher.
New data and studies suggest the risks of the abortion drug are much more common than what abortion activists claim, with as many as one in 17 requiring hospital treatment. Another study by the Charlotte Lozier Institute found that the rate of abortion-related emergency room visits by women taking the abortion drug increased more than 500 percent between 2002 and 2015.
The abortion drug is used for more than half of all abortions in the United States, according to a new report from the Guttmacher Institute. In 2020, the drug was responsible for 54 percent of all unborn babies’ abortion deaths, up from 39 percent in 2017, the pro-abortion research group found.
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