Junk science abounds in abortion pill case
Overturning Roe v. Wade was just the beginning.
In the case of Idaho v. United States, the question is whether states can disregard longstanding federal protections and bar doctors from providing abortions to patients experiencing medical emergencies.
The second case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. Food and Drug Administration, targets access to mifepristone, a safe and effective medication used in most abortions in this country and for miscarriage management. Since its FDA approval a quarter century ago, mifepristone has been safely used by more than 5 million people.
As the dozens of legal briefs filed this week in support of the FDA make clear, if the Supreme Court allowed the court of appeals’ order to take effect, it would roll back the clock on science and cause turmoil nationwide.
‘Expert’ witnesses, anti-abortion claims have been widely debunked
For one thing, the court order would undo the FDA’s decision to allow patients to obtain mifepristone through telemedicine and by mail, like other similarly safe medications, rather than having to travel hundreds of miles just to pick up a pill.
For some patients – particularly lowincome patients, people of color and those in rural areas – losing a telehealth option would mean losing access to this essential medication altogether.
That’s not all that is at stake. This case is also about how courts tackle the rampant misinformation plaguing our public discourse.
Far from being grounded in vetted medical research, the lower court rulings against the FDA are steeped in junk science. If the nation’s highest court sides with the anti-abortion extremists, it will send a message that any ideologue who opposes a medication can use discredited “experts” and shoddy research to throw out the FDA’s evidence-based decisions, harming millions of Americans – a prospect that should alarm us all.
As the ACLU and partner organizations explained in a brief we filed in the Supreme Court, in overriding the FDA’s scientific judgment about mifepristone’s safety, the Texas courts relied heavily on testimony and research from a handful of doctors with moral and religious objections to abortion who make a habit of peddling misinformation about its safety.
My colleagues and I who litigate reproductive-rights cases know these witnesses well: We have parsed their biased studies and questioned them in courtrooms across the country.
Any rudimentary examination of their credentials and opinions makes plain how unqualified they are to contest FDA’s scientific conclusions.
Don’t just take our word for it. Time and again, when courts have examined the credibility of the witnesses the Texas courts relied on here, they have discredited their testimony and revealed it for the junk science it is:
⬤ For instance, multiple courts have rejected “expert” opinions about abortion by Dr. Donna Harrison (president of the lead anti-abortion plaintiff in this suit) as “inaccurate and incomplete,” “generally at odds with solid medical evidence” and “exaggerated or distorted.”
⬤ In 2022, Dr. Ingrid Skop’s testimony on abortion was thrown out of a Florida court as “inaccurate and overstated.”
⬤ Dr. George Delgado has been discounted by courts for advancing an “unproven” theory of so-called abortion pill reversal that leading medical authorities denounce as “not based on science.” And those are just a few examples. These witnesses also have made damning admissions under oath.
For instance, Dr. Skop – cited 17 times by the court of appeals – admitted in 2020 that she is “not a really good researcher,” and that she routinely “lift(s)” language from other authors without attribution, claiming she “didn’t realize that, you know, using wording from a paper that you agreed with qualified as plagiarism.”
Her research on the issues in this case was published not by a reputable medical journal but by an advocacy group that claims former President Barack Obama hypnotized listeners with his speeches.
In parroting the widely debunked theory that abortion harms mental health, the Texas district court ignored the exhaustive research on this topic by leading national and global professional associations in favor of a widely criticized study by Dr. Priscilla Coleman – whose work has been retracted and disavowed by journals that once published it.
And the court recited sweeping statistics about the purported harms of abortion while obscuring that they were drawn from a study of 98 anonymous bloggers on a website called “Abortion Changes You.”
This is not about junk science on an obscure website getting reshared by conspiracy theorists.
Junk science has made its way to the highest court of the land
It’s about a group of extremists who want to see abortion banned nationwide using junk science to try to achieve that goal – and, so far, finding receptive ears from the judges they hand-selected to hear their case.
Heading into the Supreme Court’s oral arguments and upcoming decision later this year, every American should be terrified that federal courts have joined in peddling anti-abortion ideology and that junk science has made its way to the highest court of the land.
As hundreds of pharmaceutical companies, the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, and many others told the Supreme Court, overriding the FDA’s actions here would severely destabilize the whole pharmaceutical industry – stifling innovation and erecting unnecessary barriers to critical medicines beyond abortion, with catastrophic implications for the American public.
Access to safe and effective FDA-approved medications like mifepristone should be based on rigorous scientific research and the medical community consensus – not the fringe opinions of a few extremists pushing debunked claims to serve their ideological goals.
Julia Kaye Opinion contributor