Todd Blanche Can End Biden’s Mail-Order Abortion Scheme Now

Everybody has been waiting for the Food and Drug Administration to finish its safety review of the abortion drug mifepristone. This study, prompted by evidence that the drugs are more dangerous to women than previously supposed, is meant to inform changes the administration might make to the drug’s long-term FDA regulations. Reporting suggests that the study is now seriously underway and on track, which is welcomed news. However, any subsequent regulations are likely to be challenged in court by the abortion lobby and subject to lengthy litigation.

In the meantime, there’s another decision of utmost importance the administration has to make about abortion drugs — one that relies not on the FDA, but on Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, who has been nominated as attorney general and awaits confirmation in the Senate. That’s the decision about whether, before the study is completed and the long-term regulations are set, we should still follow the Biden rules that everyone involved (other than the abortion industry, that is) admits are both dangerous and illegal.

The question is before the administration right now, thanks to a lawsuit brought by Louisiana and one of the growing cohort of survivors of Biden’s abortion-drug regime. The lawsuit seeks to reverse Biden’s rule changes allowing abortion drugs to be prescribed over the internet, without an in-person medical exam.

The DOJ does not contest the core of the lawsuit’s argument: the Biden rules were implemented in a way that violated the Administrative Procedure Act and are therefore unlawful. In fact, as the court found, the administration has basically said as much already.

Since they seem to agree on the merits, the DOJ led by Acting AG Blanche could resolve the whole problem immediately by simply settling the case and agreeing to a court-ordered consent decree. So far, however, they haven’t done so.

Instead, in addition to a few weak standing arguments that the courts have rejected, the administration has argued that, even if they’re illegal, the Biden rules should stay in place because the FDA’s safety review is still ongoing. This has been the administration’s line in general: Biden’s rules, they say, must stay in place until the study is complete.

Citing the review as a reason for keeping the Biden regulations makes no sense. In the first place, it confuses the issues at hand. The study is meant to inform any future regulations and to help the FDA make its medical judgments. But the question about the pre-existing Biden rules, and whether they violate the Administrative Procedure Act, is a legal question. It doesn’t need a study to back it up.

In the second place, the fact that the FDA needs a study only proves why the Biden rules were illegal in the first place. Biden’s FDA didn’t do any serious study before changing the in-person dispensing rules. The medical arguments they offered — as courts have found and as the FDA concedes — gave no adequate support for the changes they were proposing, in any way.

The whole argument from the administration has been that we need to wait for a gold-standard study in order for any new Trump regulations to stand up to judicial scrutiny.

But the DOJ is holding Biden’s regulations to a far, far lower standard. Despite having no scientific backing, and despite courts having found them illegal already, the DOJ is still arguing for keeping them in place. A high bar for Trump and pro-life states to clear, and a low bar for Biden and the abortion industry.

It’s in Blanche’s power to end this double standard immediately, restore pro-life states’ ability to enforce their laws, and keep abortion drugs from being so readily available to abusers online. There’s no reason for the DOJ to continue fighting to keep Biden rules that it knows are illegal in the first place, let alone ones that are so clearly harmful.

Sen. Josh Hawley, to his great credit, clearly understands both the argument and the stakes, and he has called on Blanche to settle the case immediately. Other pro-life senators should, too.

Every single Republican senator on the Judiciary Committee represents a state whose laws are being undermined by the internet-dispensing regime that Biden allowed. The attorneys general of all but one of those states have asked for the Biden rule to be immediately paused while the FDA’s study continues. For now, the decision about whether to do so rests in the hands of Todd Blanche.

Deciding whether the Biden rules were illegal isn’t just an academic legal question. The Biden rules have already facilitated hundreds of thousands of babies killed illegally in pro-life states, with more every single month, and more cases of coercion, abuse, and violence toward women continually coming to light. Whether or not we keep them in place has a real and immediate effect, and likely a long-term effect, too.

There’s no legal reason to keep the Biden rules on in-person dispensing. There’s no scientific reason. There’s no political reason either. More than 70 percent of the country supports the pre-Biden requirement. The only thing left is for the Department of Justice to correct the record and restore the regulation to the pre-Biden status quo, as the law requires. Pro-life senators should urge him to do so.

Marjorie Dannenfelser is president of Susan B. Anthony List, a national pro-life organization dedicating to advancing leaders and pursuing policies to reduce and ultimately end abortion.