Blanche must stop America’s abortion epidemic
Article excerpt
Women can now go from an online request for abortion drugs to a completed chemical abortion in a matter of days, often without ever seeing a doctor in person. That speed and anonymity have created obvious dangers. Women such as Rosalie Markezich say abortion pills were obtained in their names, mailed across state lines, and […]
Women can now go from an online request for abortion drugs to a completed chemical abortion in a matter of days, often without ever seeing a doctor in person. That speed and anonymity have created obvious dangers. Women such as Rosalie Markezich say abortion pills were obtained in their names, mailed across state lines, and used to pressure them into abortions they did not want. Now, women harmed by abortion drugs are asking the federal government to restore safeguards before more women are coerced, deceived, or abandoned.
According to a press release from Susan B. Anthony Pro-life America, a group of women hurt by abortion drugs is asking the Department of Justice to “side with Rosalie Markezich and settle her legal case immediately so abortion drugs are no longer sent through the mail in ways that put women at risk.”
Markezich’s story is one of those awful stories that many pro-choicers wish were not true. Markezich was a resident of Louisiana, a state with some of the most pro-life laws on the books, when she was coerced by her then-boyfriend into taking the abortion pill.
In an interview with the Alliance Defending Freedom, Markezich recounted how her boyfriend, upon hearing that she was happily pregnant, used her personal information without her knowledge to get a prescription from California sent right to her doorstep.
“I told him that if I aborted this child, I would never be the same,” Markezich told the ADF. “I pleaded with him: ‘Don’t make me do this.’”
“I was scared, and I felt pressured to take the pills. So I did.”
Rosalie Markezich tried throwing up the abortion drugs, but was not able. As the abortion drugs went to work, she started bleeding and did not stop for a week.
According to the letter sent to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche: “We grieve with Rosalie because many of us recognize parts of our own stories in hers: the pressure, the confusion, the fear, the absence of real medical care, and the feeling that the system was designed to move drugs faster than it was designed to protect women. No woman should be forced, pressured, deceived, or abandoned into taking drugs that end her child’s life and place her own health at risk.”
The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to begin confirmation hearings for Blanche on July 15. The letter sent by this group of 14 women petitions him to hear out the case of women coerced, forced, or tricked into taking the abortion pill, often leading to unforeseen and dangerous side effects.
The case in question is Louisiana v. FDA, a contentious case that is awaiting a final decision by the Supreme Court.
Louisiana, as well as a number of other states, pro-life groups, representatives, and doctors, filed the suit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, arguing that it improperly approved the abortion pill to be prescribed without an in-person visit.
In 2023, during President Joe Biden’s administration, the FDA decided that doctors are allowed to prescribe mifepristone via telehealth and send abortion pills through the mail. The FDA’s decision undid restrictions mandating in-person screening before and after dispensing the pill, the Washington Examiner reported.
Mifepristone is the first drug that many women like Rosalie Markezich take, or are forced to take, to induce a chemical abortion. It works by cutting off the hormones that are keeping the baby alive in the woman’s womb and is quickly followed by misoprostol, which induces bleeding and contractions of the uterus to remove the baby’s body from the mother.
The pro-life groups in the case hope to use Blanche’s appointment to the attorney general’s position to secure a victory in banning mifepristone. As it currently stands, the abortion drug is in the process of reevaluation by the FDA. Blanche does not need to keep defending the Biden administration’s mail-order abortion regime in court. He can change the Justice Department’s position, side with the women harmed by abortion drugs, and help restore the safeguards the FDA wrongly discarded. It is up to him to finish what voters elected the Trump administration to do.
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About 1.1 million abortions occur per year, higher than it ever was before the Dobbs decision. The only way forward for the pro-life movement is to ban the abortion drug. Blanche must do this, or abortion numbers will only increase.
“The federal government should not defend policies that make it easier for men, abusers, traffickers, or anyone else to obtain abortion drugs in a woman’s name and pressure her to take them in isolation,” the letter sent to Blanche reads. “We are united in asking the Department of Justice to recognize the harm women have suffered and to act before more women are placed in similar danger.”