Republican senator Ted Cruz has faced massive backlash for co-authoring a letter to the U.S Food and Drug Administration or FDA demanding that the abortion pill be banned.
Misleading claim
In the letter, Sen. Cruz and 20 Republican senators asked the FDA to classify the abortion pill as an imminent hazard to the public health that poses a "significant threat of danger" and removes the pill from the market.
The document also stated that pregnancy is not a "life-threatening illness," and the abortion pill does not cure or prevent any disease, as reported by USA Today.
But according to the latest figures from the World Health Organization, in 2017, around 810 women died from preventable causes every day, and they are related to pregnancy and childbirth.
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In the United States, the maternal mortality rate in 2018 was 17.4 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births, rising to 37.1 live births for black women, as reported by the CDC.
Democrat Shannon Freshour, who is running for Congress in November, shared a tweet by Sen. Cruz claiming that pregnancy is not life-threatening. She said that Cruz's statement is a "dangerous, misogynistic lie."
Freshour added that pregnancy could and is often a life-threatening or life-ending medical condition, especially among black mothers and women of color.
The president of reproductive rights lobbying and advocacy organization NARAL Pro-Choice America, Ilyse Hogue, tweeted taht medication abortion is safe. Hogue added that Sen. Cruz knows that the pills are safe and that fear and lies are all that they have to push their unpopular agenda.
Hogue also said that politicians who push ideology over science to shape public policy are the ones who give people a disastrous response to COVID-19 and that the ideology over science mindset should end now.
The associate professor at Emory University's Rollins School of Public Health, Dabney P. Evans told Newsweek that the FDA is a highly respected scientific organization that should be left to conduct its regulatory responsibilities free from political interference.
Evans said that the letter represents an overstep that endangers the health and the rights of pregnant women under the guise of protecting women's health.
The professor in the faculty of health sciences at the University of Ottawa, Dr. Angel Foster, said that carrying a pregnancy to term and delivering carries a greater risk of death "than having an early medication abortion.
Foster also said that the claims made by Sen. Cruz and 20 other Republican Senators are belied by the clinical and public health evidence, and the way that they use data in the letter is distorted and misleading.
Safe abortion pill
The abortion pill involves taking medicines to terminate a pregnancy, and they are mifepristone and misoprostol.
Mifepristone is taken first to block the production of progesterone to prevent a fetus from growing after than misoprostol is taken, which causes cramping and bleeding to empty the uterus, which is similar to a heavy period or miscarriage.
The letter comes as some states have banned abortions amid the pandemic, deeming them as "non-essential."
In May 2020, the ACLU sued the FDA for requiring patients to travel in person to collect the abortion pill. This was immediately followed by a federal court in Maryland ruling the FDA must ease restrictions.
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