CNA Staff, Oct 1, 2020 / 01:07 pm (CNA).- A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Tennessee law that requires doctors to inform patients seeking medical abortion that the procedure could be reversed if the patient acts quickly.
The law, which was signed by Gov. Bill Lee in July, requires abortion providers to notify patients that medical abortions can be reversed; a procedure that is becoming more common among pro-life doctors, but which has not yet been evaluated by the FDA.
Medical abortions made up around 40% of at U.S. abortions in 2017, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. The FDA allows the two-pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol to be used until 10 weeks gestation.
Tennessee’s law required the physician to offer notification of the possibility of reversal at least 48 hours before the abortion, again in writing after the first pill of the regimen has been administered, and written on “conspicuously” displayed signs in private offices, ambulatory surgical treatment centers, facilities, and clinics that have provided more than 50 abortions in the previous calendar year, CNN reported.
Tennesee’s five abortion clinics, along with Planned Parenthood and the ACLU, filed suit against the law in August.
The federal judge, William Campbell, wrote that he was “unable to assess fully the competing expert opinions as to whether the mandated message is ‘truthful and not misleading,’ in the absence of the experts’ testimony,” but also that the plaintiffs had demonstrated “a strong or substantial likelihood” that the mandate violates the First Amendment.
The judge’s block on the law will last until Oct. 13.
Several other states, including Oklahoma, North Dakota, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Nebraska have passed laws requiring abortion providers to inform patients about abortion pill reversal. A district judge granted a preliminary injunction against North Dakota’s requirement during Sept. 2019.
In July, a federal judge overruled FDA requirements that women visit with a doctor in-person before they can be prescribed a medical abortion.
Since 2000, the FDA has placed the chemical abortion protocol of mifepristone and misoprostol under its Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy list, requiring it to be prescribed in-person in a hospital, clinic, or medical office. The patient must sign a form acknowledging that she has been adequately informed of the risks.
Pro-abortion groups, however, have pushed for the pill to be dispensed remotely via telemedicine during the coronavirus pandemic, due to apparent difficulties women could face traveling to a clinic in-person.
The first drug, mifepristone, effectively starves the unborn baby by blocking the effects of the hormone progesterone. The second drug, misoprostol, is taken up to two days later and induces labor.
Side effects that women suffer from the pills, such as heavy bleeding, abdominal pain, or severe infections, are usually treated at emergency rooms, which are not required to report the incidents to the FDA.
After the federal judge’s decision, pro-life leaders and senators asked the FDA to remove the abortion pill from the market altogether by classifying it as a public health hazard. Nearly two dozen pro-life leaders said that pro-abortion groups were “using the coronavirus pandemic as a ruse” in their efforts to deregulate the pills.
A 2018 study, published in Issues in Law and Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal, examined 261 successful abortion pill reversals, and showed that the reversal success rates were 68 percent with a high-dose oral progesterone protocol and 64 percent with an injected progesterone protocol.
Both procedures significantly improved the 25 percent fetal survival rate if no treatment is offered and a woman simply declines the second pill of a medical abortion. The case study also showed that the progesterone treatments caused no increased risk of birth defects or preterm births due.
The study was authored by Dr. Mary Davenport and Dr. George Delgado, who have been studying the abortion pill reversal procedures since 2009. Delgado also sits on the board of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
The Abortion Pill Rescue Network, which Delgado serves as a medical advisor, has claimed to have saved over 500 babies from abortion. The network is a program of Heartbeat International, a longstanding network of pro-life pregnancy assistance.
The American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which tends to oppose abortion regulations, has criticized the scientific claims behind abortion pill reversal.
[…]
““As a founding principle of our country, we have always welcomed immigrant and refugee populations, and through the social services and good works of the Church, we have accompanied our brothers and sisters in integrating to daily American life,” Bishop Mario Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chair of the US bishops’ Comittee on Migration, said Jan. 2.”
Someone needs to take a remedial US history class.
SOL,
Which part of US history did you think they need a remedial class on?
Who are most Americans originally if not immigrants?
I’d agree it’s not correct to say that we have always, at all times welcomed immigrants and refugees but we certainly have done that selectively. And Catholics have for the greater part been among the groups of immigrants not warmly welcomed.
We need immigration to counteract the current birth dearth but we don’t have to have open borders or risk our national security. There should be a reasonable and humane approach to immigration.
Has it occurred to you that mass immigration is a cause of the drop in birthrates? By driving up the cost of living (housing, heath care, taxes, etc.), while depressing wages, it makes family formation so much more difficult.
Tony,
Birthrates are plummeting globally with or without immigration. Even government incentives to have a replacement level birthrate have failed.
Hungary is offering tax incentives for families and hopefully they’ll have some success.
Mrscracker,
The founding American people were not immigrants but colonists/settlers. They didn’t enter into a pre-existing polity and receive citizenship or some other form of membership from another people. The whole “America is a land of immigrants” myth was created by leftist subversives even if used by 20th ce nationalists for their own purposes after the fact, more than 3 centuries after the first British colonists started settling this country. Many of the founding fathers after the revolution even explicitly wrote on the question of whether anyone non-British should be allowed to immigrate to the US.
This original Anglo-American (and Protestant Christian) heritage and identity is what the left is trying to erase and unfortunately too many Catholic bishops are assisting in this, even if the bishops seek to replace it with some vague “Catholic” identity.
This system is currently in a stage of collapse, and continued immigration will further destabilization and increase the likelihood of wide-scale violence, regardless of how necessary believers in infinite economic growth say immigrants are for that.
SOL,
Good morning!
My daddy’s side of the family has been here for 400 years. I went to the UK a few years ago and visited the parish church of a 17th century colonial ancestor. In his memorial he’s referred to as “Henry the Immigrant” because he migrated to the American Colonies.
🙂
You know, the longer your ancestors have lived in North America the more likely you are to find non Anglo Saxon ancestry or ancestors who came as convicts. The American colonies were a dumping ground for thousands of British convicts until the Revolutionary War. After that, the British had to turn to Australia and Tasmania to dump their unwanted.
Beyond chattel slavery, folks of African ancestry have been here for 400 plus years. Many were free people of color and many intermarried with white colonists.
And of course, our American Indians have their own perspectives on immigration.
History is complicated and the more you look at it, the more humble you feel. Most of us have very modest beginnings and sometimes, we find very surprising narratives along the way.
Your argument seems to be that, since we are all the descendants of immigrants (in the broadest sense of the word), there is no justification for this nation (or really, any nation) to have a restrictive immigration policy. Apparently, this Ellis Island sentimentalism must override all other political, social, cultural and economic considerations. Does a country have a right to try to maintain its ethnic and cultural balance by limiting who is allowed in?
More mindless, liberal rubbish from bishops who seem utterly incapable of, not to mention unwilling to, speak in anything other than left wing cliches. Will they ever declare solidarity with the American people?
Looked up the bishop in question.
Wikipedia: Mario Eduardo Dorsonville-Rodríguez (born October 31, 1960) is a Colombian-born bishop of the Catholic Church in the United States.
Like Jose Gomez, another immigrant who is presumptuous enough to lecture Americans about American history and identity.
Thanks for the information. I suppose the good bishop has admonished the elites in Colombia on the need to clean up the corruption and to improve the nation’s economy that has apparently created such intolerable conditions.
Wish the bishops (and the nuns!!) would show a little solidarity with the dyslexic/dyscalculaic/etc community.
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Just because dyslexics frequently have high intelligence does not mean they all go to MIT and walk out with $75,000 starting income.
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Many suffer socially as well as educationally and the job situation upon adulthood can look bleak. As many prisoners are dyslexic, I think it is a good bet if it was caught early in school, we’d have fewer children in trouble and fewer adults in prison.
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I mean no ill will toward those looking for a better life, but we have plenty of hurting children/adults who were born here. Don’t they deserve the same concern?
Tony,
North Americans, with the exception of those descended from our Indian tribes, are all the product of quite diverse immigrant populations from the past 400-500 years. I dislike the term “diverse ” because it’s become a cliche, but it really does describe our immigrant history.
I don’t think race or ethnicity should even enter into a Catholic conversation regarding what to conserve in America. Color and ethnicity simply don’t signify but culture does.
A Judeo Christian culture is what conservative Christians and others should be concerned about preserving. Not Anglo Saxonism. Culture, not color is what’s critical.
And yes, I strongly believe that sovereign nations have a right to secure their borders and enforce immigration laws. And preserve their unique cultures. But you have to have enough population to ensure a functioning society to pass that culture down to. Societies that are ageing and not reproducing themselves won’t be capable of that and will eventually be replaced.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Immigrants – they are ambassadors of the Good News.
All of them? How so? In what way?