I regret to inform you that former Vice President and likely 2024 candidate Mike Pence—who is not a doctor or scientist or pharmacologist or even a person with a uterus but nonetheless fancies himself an expert on abortion—appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday to express his “deep concerns” with the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone back in the year 2000.
In reference to the abortion pill case, which was filed by a right-wing activist group, decided by a shady, Trump-appointed Texas judge, and then made its way up to the Supreme Court last week, Pence said he hopes the courts ultimately ban the medication nationwide.
“I’d like to see this medication off the market to protect the unborn, but also, I have deep concerns about the way the FDA went about approving mifepristone 20 years ago,” he said. “I’m grateful that action is being taken in the courts to hold the FDA accountable to what the law requires in reviewing any medication.”
Pence then tried to frame his comments as being feminist and super pro-women: “So for the sake of protecting the unborn, but also for the health and safety of women, I’m looking forward to this litigation continuing and holding the manufacturers of mifepristone accountable and ultimately putting the interests of women first.”
To be clear: The drug mifepristone has been used safely along with misoprostol to end pregnancies in the first trimester for over 20 years. Per a feature on the pill in the New York Times:
More than 100 scientific studies, spanning continents and decades, have examined the effectiveness and safety of mifepristone and misoprostol, the abortion pills that are commonly used in the United States. All conclude that the pills are a safe method for terminating a pregnancy.
I probably don’t need to say this, but it also can’t be repeated enough: Nothing about Mike Pence’s or the Texas judge’s or Sam Alito’s or anyone else’s purported “concerns” about the abortion pill have anything to do with the health and safety of women. It’s about controlling women and pregnancy-capable people, period. And the fact that CBS is allowing Pence to get up there on a Sunday morning and spew his pseudoscientific bullshit unchallenged is a failure of journalism.