By Will Hall, Baptist Message executive editor
WASHINGTON (LBM) – Forty Baptist leaders representing 22 states joined the Family Research Council to send a letter to the White House asking President Trump to stand firm in defending the unborn and to protect women and girls from the dangers of the abortion pill mifepristone.
The letter also was sent to the Department of Justice and the Food and Drug Administration.
The plea to President Trump comes on the heels of Southern Baptists adopting a resolution this summer calling for federal and state lawmakers to stop the “manufacture, sale, and distribution of the chemical abortion drugs” and to “enforce the Comstock Act prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills.” Meanwhile, the findings of a large-scale study about mifepristone abortions (865,727 data points from 2017-2023) were just released showing “a serious adverse event rate of 10.93 percent,” about 22 times the life-threatening complications reported by the FDA and drug manufacturers (0.5 percent).
The leaders expressed appreciation for the president’s “unwavering defense of the unborn during your first term” and asked him to restore “FDA safety protocols for mifepristone, including an ultrasound requirement”, to direct the FDA to “reevaluate” its approval of mifepristone, and to instruct the Department of Justice “to enforce the Comstock Act”, which prohibits sending abortion pills via mail.
Enforcement of the Comstock Act is essential to the 12 states with near-total abortion bans. Doctors in other states work around these bans using telemedicine (long distance computer consults) and then shipping abortion pills through the U.S. mail.
But safety concerns are transcendent to all states considering the recent report about the number of women and girls who have experienced severe adverse events from mifepristone such as sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, incomplete abortions necessitating a repeat (surgical) abortion, as well as cardiac, pulmonary, thrombosis, anaphylaxis and other threats to life.
The signers lamented the “rollback of FDA safety protocols” that took place in previous years and objected to the shield laws in pro-abortion states that allow providers to “illegally ship mifepristone into pro-life states.”
“Women, unborn children, and the rule of law urgently need your leadership,” they entreated in closing their letter to the president.
