An attorney with a conservative legal firm on the frontlines of America’s abortion battle recently explained some of the “new wars” already unfolding in the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
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Denise Harle, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and director of the Center for Life, told CBN’s Faithwire last month newfound fights over abortion began the moment the high court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision on June 24, 2022, sent abortion regulations back to the states.
“It started on day one,” Harle said, noting how 13 states’ trigger laws immediately went into effect. These laws were passed before the end of Roe to be intentionally triggered if and when the abortion rights case was overturned.
Once Roe was off the books, those laws took effect in Idaho, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.
“So, that was off to the races,” Harle said, noting the resulting litigation has become the “biggest battle” at the moment. “The abortion industry filed lawsuits right away. I think we have more than 30 active lawsuits right now where the abortion industry is trying to strike down duly-enacted state laws where the people of those states have chosen lawmakers to enact these policies to protect life.”
Despite those challenges for the pro-life movement, Harle said there are some bright spots, including the fact 22 states have enacted legislation “to protect life from abortion.”
“That’s a wonderful thing we couldn’t even imagine … one year ago today,” she said.
Watch Harle explain the next battlefield:
Harle also spoke about another battlefront picking up steam in the wake of Roe: the ever-contentious debate over the abortion pill, which comes in the form of two medications.
The first, mifepristone, stops a pregnancy from being viable, and the second, misoprostol, causes a woman’s womb to contract and the pregnancy to end.
“Chemical abortion is extremely dangerous,” Harle said. “Abortion in the first place isn’t healthcare, but when the FDA approved chemical abortion back in 2000, it was done through a very backdoor, illegal process. … Regulations weren’t attached when they put it onto the market.”
According to Harle, the government had to categorize pregnancy “as an illness” to achieve approval, and she noted ADF has spent years fighting the pill’s approval process. Throughout that effort, she said the FDA had “stonewalled” any challenge to the drug’s availability.
“Chemical abortion, unfortunately, now constitutes almost 60% of abortions where women are often getting these deadly drugs off the internet and committing the abortions at home by themselves without ever seeing a physician to see how far along in pregnancy they are, or whether they have an ectopic pregnancy or other risks,” she said. “So, it’s extremely dangerous to women and girls’ health.”
As CBN’s Faithwire previously reported, ADF sued the FDA in federal court late last year on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, and doctors Shaun Jester, Regina Frost-Clark, Tyler Johnson, and George Delgado.
“We brought this lawsuit because the FDA has been entrusted by Congress to protect the American public from dangerous drugs,” Erik Baptist, senior counsel at ADF, told CBN’s Faithwire last month. “The FDA has failed America’s women and girls by approving dangerous chemical abortion drugs.”
He continued, “And we’re taking the FDA to court because, for decades, it has stonewalled my clients who are trying to challenge and take these drugs off the marketplace.”
These statements come as the FDA will allow pharmacies to carry the abortion pill. Due to recent Biden administration changes, women will no longer need to receive the pregnancy-ending pills in person, with telehealth and mail delivery options on the table.
Dr. Donna Harrison, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told CBN’s Faithwire the abortion pill is a “powerful anti-hormone” that blocks women’s bodies from continuing with a healthy pregnancy.
“Use of this drug has been associated with massive hemorrhage,” she said. “I’ve reviewed some of the adverse event reports sent to the [U.S. Food and Drug Administration], where women have over half of their blood volume — some have lost more than their entire blood volume — and had to have more than their entire blood volume replaced to keep up with the massive hemorrhage.”
“It’s the kind of bleeding one might see in a major motor vehicle accident,” Harrison said.
Watch her detail additional warnings about the purported dangers of the abortion pill:
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