{"id":209267,"date":"2019-08-28T07:48:58","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T12:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=209267"},"modified":"2019-08-28T21:30:43","modified_gmt":"2019-08-29T02:30:43","slug":"fda-commissioner-relax-abortion-pill-bad-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/fda-commissioner-relax-abortion-pill-bad-idea\/","title":{"rendered":"Former FDA Commissioner wants to relax abortion pill restrictions. This is a very bad idea."},"content":{"rendered":"
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In an opinion piece<\/a> published in the New England Journal of Medicine, former FDA Commissioner Dr. Jane Henney and her co-author argue that the drug mifepristone<\/a>\u00a0(the abortion pill) should be removed from the database (called REMS) that limits abortion pill prescribers to doctors who are able to give appropriate follow-up care to their patients in the event of complications.<\/p>\n

In an interview with NPR<\/a> about her piece, Henney claimed, \u201cThe current restrictions impose a lot of burden on women who have to go to a clinic and [on] the certified physician. If some of those restrictions were lifted, you could possibly go to your own physician who might write a prescription that you could get filled in your pharmacy and take this medication at home right now.\u201d Henney also claims that the FDA’s restrictions are outdated, because the abortion pill has now been shown to be safe:\u00a0\u201cI believe it’s important for them to do another review in light of the safety information we know about this drug.” But “safe” is a relative term. In the U.S. alone, 24 women have died<\/a> from taking the pill, and well over 4,000 have had serious complications<\/a>, including hemorrhaging and sepsis.<\/p>\n