March 2024

March 26th, 2024

By: Mike Pence

The Food and Drug Administration was established to protect public health by ensuring the safety of medicine. Tragically, when the FDA illegally approved the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone, it abdicated this duty in the name of promoting abortion.

This week, the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to right that historic wrong.

In 2000, the FDA illegally approved mifepristone under rules that allow the agency to approve drugs that provide meaningful therapeutic benefits over existing treatments for serious and life-threatening illnesses, such as AIDS. Pregnancy, of course, is not an illness, and abortion is not a treatment. The FDA claimed otherwise, abusing its own regulation and illegally approving the abortion drug with tragic effects.

Chemical abortions are more dangerous to women than surgical abortions, as the FDA has known since it approved mifepristone. The rates of death from abortion pills are four times higher than that of surgical abortions. As of December 2022, 32 deaths have been reported as a direct result of mifepristone. Studies have shown that 10% of women who use mifepristone require follow-up medical treatment for a failed or incomplete abortion and 20% will experience adverse effects such as hemorrhaging or infections.

Yet, in the intervening decades since mifepristone’s approval, the FDA has continually placed women’s health at greater risk by further loosening restrictions regarding the use of the drug.

In 2016, the FDA under former President Barack Obama abandoned multiple safety protocols put in place when the drug was originally approved, including raising the maximum gestational age allowed for use from 7 weeks to 10 weeks. The risk of adverse events increases drastically as development progresses, yet the Obama administration disregarded science in the name of leftist ideology.

In 2021, the Biden administration made things worse by eliminating the requirement to meet in person with a healthcare provider, thereby allowing mifepristone to be prescribed through telemedicine.

Because of this action by the current administration, fewer pregnant women have had the opportunity for an ultrasound, which is critical in identifying the gestational age of the baby and in ruling out an ectopic pregnancy and other significant risks to the mother. Even worse, Biden’s telemedicine loophole makes it harder to confirm that a woman is not being coerced into performing an abortion against her will, leaving human trafficking victims open to even further exploitation.

Additionally, we know that abortion can leave long-lasting emotional scars. Our government should not allow women to be abandoned while undergoing the mental hardship that so often accompanies abortion.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments this week in a case that seeks to address these injustices and correct the grave mistake made by the FDA more than two decades ago. The FDA originally approved mifepristone because it put ideology over the law. Likewise, the Obama and Biden administrations repeatedly expanded access to the drug because they put ideology over the law.

Now the Supreme Court can remind the agency’s left-wing ideologues that America is still a nation of laws. I encourage the court to reverse the FDA’s illegal approval of mifepristone and make a clear and unmistakable stand for women’s health and the right to life.

Read more here at the WashingtonExaminer.com.

March 31st, 2024

Dozens of conservative-leaning groups are calling on Congress to strike down a controversial new Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would require large corporations to issue disclosures about their carbon emissions.

The SEC voted to adopt the rule, which requires companies to issue reports to investors on the effects of their operations on climate change, earlier this month in a 3-2 vote. The groups in the letter call for Congress to “use all of the legislative powers at your disposal” to overturn the rule.

The signatories branded the rule as a “radical climate agenda” regulation that “stifles American innovation through mountains of paperwork and endless red tape.”

“The SEC is tasked with regulating securities — stocks and bonds — not maneuvering a destructive climate agenda behind the backs of Americans’ duly elected representatives in Washington,” the letter reads. “This rule is a vast overreach beyond the modest powers granted to the SEC under federal law.”

The letter was organized by Advancing American Freedom and includes some 60 other groups associated with the Right, including Americans for Tax Reform, Americans for Prosperity, and Consumers’ Research.

The SEC climate disclosure rule in question is part of President Joe Biden’s broader climate agenda, which envisions cutting greenhouse gas emissions by more than half when compared to 2005 levels by the end of the decade.

The rule creates guidelines for how and what companies must report to investors about how their operations affect the climate. It requires large- and mid-sized companies to report greenhouse gas emissions — reports that would be audited by an outside party.

The rule is significantly pared back from a proposed version by omitting a requirement that corporations disclose emissions generated by suppliers and customers. Still, it has already faced a legal challenge from several Republican-led states.

Senate Republicans also initiated an effort to strike down the rule within minutes of it being announced.

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler is a major proponent of the rule and has spoken out in support of it.

“These final rules build on past requirements by mandating material climate risk disclosures by public companies and in public offerings,” Gensler said about the time the climate disclosure rule was approved. “The rules will provide investors with consistent, comparable, and decision-useful information, and issuers with clear reporting requirements.”

Read more here at TheWashingtonExaminer.com.