Sen. Ted Cruz joined 19 other U.S. Senators on Tuesday in penning a letter to the Food and Drug Administration asking the agency to ban abortion pills.
“As you are surely aware, pregnancy is not a life-threatening illness, and the abortion pill does not cure or prevent any disease,” read the letter. “Nevertheless, this pill that is specifically designed and intended to kill preborn children was raced to the market, with devastating consequences.”
The Republican lawmakers urged the FDA to remove the drug from U.S. markets and declare it an “imminent hazard to public health.”
Medicated abortion has been used safely in the U.S. for two decades and serious complications are rare, according to Planned Parenthood. If complications do arise from a medicated abortion, they can be treated with other medications or treatments.
“Abortion is a safe, common procedure that 1 in 4 Texans with the ability to get pregnant will have in their lifetime,” said NARAL Pro-Choice Texas Executive Director Aimee Arrambide in a statement to the Signal. “While abortion is completely safe, it’s not easily accessible to all Texans. Instead of trying to further restrict abortion access, Ted Cruz should sit with the fact that this nation has a maternal mortality crisis that does make pregnancy life-threatening, disproportionately affecting Black mothers, and that policies he supports (like not expanding Medicaid) exacerbate this crisis.”
Research from the Guttmacher Institute has shown abortion rates are similar in countries where abortion is highly restricted and where it is legal. Moreover, the data shows that legally restricting abortion does little to actually prevent abortions, and instead increases the chance that the procedure is done unsafely or at home. Likewise, Planned Parenthood has warned that restriction abortions will lead to higher mortality rates for pregnant women and their children.
Texas is home to 10 cities with a population of more than 50,000 without an abortion clinic within 100 miles, according to a study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research.
Photo: Samuel Corum/Getty Images
Fernando covers Texas politics and government at the Texas Signal. Before joining the Signal, Fernando spent two years at the Houston Chronicle and previously interned at Houston’s NPR station News 88.7. He is a graduate of the University of Houston, Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, and enjoys reading, highlighting things, and arguing on social media. You can follow him on Twitter at @fernramirez93 or email at fernando@texassignalarchive.com
