Pro-life lawmakers are pushing President Donald Trump’s administration to continue to regulate fetal tissue research and to uphold safety regulations on abortion drugs.
Republican Colorado Rep. Doug Lamborn and Republican Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker led fellow lawmakers, including Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, in writing two letters to the Trump administration calling for continued enforcement of regulations on fetal tissue research. The move came after more than a dozen House Democrats called on the Trump administration April 6 to remove restrictions on fetal tissue research, saying research using fetal body parts was important for studying coronavirus.
The last thing anyone should be doing during the coronavirus crisis is to “try and advance the left’s radical abortion agenda,” Lamborn said.
“Life is precious at all stages and any claim to the contrary is unconscionable,” Lamborn added. (RELATED: Unsealed Invoices Show Planned Parenthood Billed A Tissue Company Nearly $25K For Fetal Body Parts)
“We will find a cure for the current coronavirus, but using tissue from aborted babies to do so is unethical and wrong,” he said. “I’m thankful that President Trump has taken such a strong stand for life, and I’m confident a solution can be found while also maintaining the sanctity of life.”
Republican Mississippi Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Republican Ohio Rep. Bob Latta also wrote a bicameral letter to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Stephen Hahn pushing the FDA to uphold the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) in place for abortion drugs.
U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the daily coronavirus task force briefing in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, U.S., April 14, 2020. REUTERS/Leah Millis
Abortion advocates and media outlets, such as The New York Times editorial board, have pushed for the removal of REMS, saying that abortion drugs are “very safe.” (RELATED: Abortion Advocates Call On FDA To Remove Restrictions On Abortion Drugs Over Coronavirus Crisis, Push Abortion Telemedicine)
The letter to Hahn slammed these calls as “reckless and dangerous.”
“The FDA should stand confidently for the protection of women,” the letter said.
“Representative Latta and I, with many of our colleagues, believe the FDA must maintain strict enforcement of the REMS for abortion drugs,” Hyde-Smith said in a statement. “With hospitals pushed to their limits by the COVID-19 health emergency, we should minimize, not increase, unrelated pressures on health care providers.”
The Susan B. Anthony List applauded the lawmakers’ actions, as SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement that the organization is “greatly encouraged” by Wicker, Hyde-Smith, Lamborn and Latta’s leadership. Dannenfelser also said the abortion industries and their allies are exploiting fears surrounding the coronavirus pandemic “to promote an extreme abortion agenda.”
“Their calls for the rollback of protective FDA regulations on dangerous chemical abortion drugs, which carry serious risks for women, potentially requiring hospitalization, prove they are willing to endanger not only the health and safety of vulnerable women but that of front-line medical personnel and all of society,” Dannenfelser said.
“Additionally, they insist that unethical experiments involving aborted baby body parts are necessary to find a cure for the coronavirus, ignoring the wide variety of ethical options already available and under development,” she said.
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