Amici support the Fifth Circuit's decision to restore the FDA's previous protections for women's health and safety, before changes made by the FDA in 2016 and 2021. Because of the FDA's changes, it became possible for women to obtain abortion pills by mail without any in-person office visit with a medical professional - before, during or after the abortion. The only required contact under the relaxed regulations is an initial encounter with telemedicine, without any physical examination. The Fifth Circuit's decision to restore the former requirements is beneficial for several reasons.
First, doctors like the respondents' members are being exploited by FDA and the drug sponsors who have cobbled together an abortion platform that privatizes the up-side profits for those prescribing these pills while offering minimal patient care. Simultaneously, the mifepristone delivery apparatus off-loads or socializes mifepristone's risks and costs - monetary, emotional, and spiritual - to others like these physicians. Such "downstream doctors," are being injured by an abortion protocol in which their unwitting participation is a feature not a bug of making drug-induced abortion widely available to American society.
The respondents' members are not imagining this phenomenon. It is not speculative. As detailed below, about 20,000 women annually are expected to visit emergency rooms due to complications from mifepristone abortions. As mifepristone abortions garner greater market share, this number will likely increase. FDA's abortion delivery apparatus, as amended in 2016 and 2021, could not function without their compelled assistance.
Second, we assess the purported benefits of the mifepristone regimen to women experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV). Some advocates for survivors of intimate partner violence support the concept of telemedicine for provision of abortion pills by mail in the mistaken belief that this is necessary for IPV survivors' health, well-being and safety.1 But bypassing the substantial health benefits of an in-person visit with a physician places that woman at increased risk to her health, well-being and safety. Telemedicine abortions make it less likely that she will be able to escape that cycle of violence. Research and professional guidelines point to better options.
Continue reading entire Brief:
http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/shu/BriefWomenInjuredbyAbortion.pdf