(LifeSiteNews) – A federal judge has permanently enjoined North Carolina’s requirement that abortion pills only be prescribed by actual physicians, while allowing other aspects of the state’s pro-life laws to continue being enforced.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles, a Biden appointee, issued a partial block on the state’s ban on non-physicians prescribing abortion pills, as well as its requirement for in-person follow-up appointments, on the grounds that they were inconsistent with U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) guidelines. Eagles allowed other rules that the federal agency did not specifically address, including in-person consultation, examination, and ultrasounds before prescribing abortion pills.
Now, Live Action reports that Eagles formally entered the injunction on June 3, making it permanent.
North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein had refused to defend the law in court, prompting GOP lawmakers to do so. It is not clear whether Republican legislative leaders plan to appeal the ruling.
Stein said he was “proud” to defend abortion and was “pleased” by the ruling, which he praised for allowing “increased access” to abortion pills, though he lamented that it left various restrictions in place.
“This decision lowers the standard of care for women, allowing dangerous DIY in-home abortions which statistically causes complications in one out of five women,” responded North Carolina Values executive director Tami Fitzgerald. “Easily obtained chemical abortion drugs are also used by human traffickers and domestic abusers who force abortions on their victims, which is happening all over the United States. The decision also strikes down reporting requirements for non-fatal complications from the drugs, which conceals dangerous complications and side effects of abortion drugs. This decision puts women’s health and safety at risk so the abortion industry can fast-track dangerous chemical abortions and maximize profits.”
Easy access to and interstate distribution of abortion pills is one of the abortion lobby’s most potent tools for perpetuating abortion-on-demand post-Roe v. Wade, which they are aggressively pursuing regardless of the risks to the women they purport to be serving.
A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.”
Pro-lifers warn that with the Biden administration completely eliminating requirements that abortion pills be taken in the presence of a medical professional, meaning without any medical supervision or medical support close by, those events are certain to increase.
“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” writes Catholic University of America research associate Michael New. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”
Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions, with available data so far indicating that now-enforceable pro-life laws could effectively wipe out an estimated 200,000 abortions a year. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrent effects through abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and embedding abortion “rights” in state constitutions.
In North Carolina, abortion is legal up to 12 weeks, with exceptions for rape and incest up to 20 weeks, for “fetal abnormalities” up to 24 weeks, and for “medical emergencies” up to birth, under a law enacted last year over a veto by Democrat Gov. Roy Cooper. Direct abortion is always gravely immoral and never needed nor ethically justified for any reason.