NH Supreme Court: Business as Usual for PP (For Now)

Who has legal standing to fight in court for women’s health? More precisely, who has standing to challenge an entity that dispenses chemical-abortion drugs in violation of federal Food and Drug Administration protocols?
Not New Hampshire taxpayers, and not a New Hampshire pro-life group representing thousands of members. That was the decision of the New Hampshire Supreme Court on October 23, as it brought to a close a case filed by two Cheshire County residents and the New Hampshire Right to Life Committee.
In dismissing the recent lawsuit by NHRTL (Buzzell et al. v. New Hampshire Board of Pharmacy), the Supreme Court didn’t get around to examining the facts. The plaintiffs had been challenging the New Hampshire Board of Pharmacy’s grant of a license to Planned Parenthood of Northern New England to dispense mifepristone, a drug to induce abortion. PPNNE advertises that it provides the pills up to nine weeks into pregnancy (with cost nationwide varying from $300 to $800). FDA protocol says seven weeks is the limit.
From NHRTL’s petition in the case:
“PPNNE knowingly violates FDA safety protocols by administering and dispensing the abortion pill past 49 days pregnancy and having its non-physician staff dispense the pills for take home use. The FDA has cataloged thousands of adverse events, including excessive bleeding and hemorrhaging, as well as several deaths from abortionists administering and dispensing the abortion pill contrary to FDA safety protocols. The FDA safety protocols are, pursuant to [state law] RSA 318:42(VII), and the Nurse Formulary, a required part of New Hampshire law and the Board of Pharmacy has acted unlawfully in granting pharmaceutical licenses to abortion clinics in knowing violation of these FDA safety protocols.”

Perhaps a successful challenge to PP’s business-as-usual will have to come from a woman who hemorrhages after taking the abortion pill eight weeks into pregnancy.

The FDA is undoubtedly under poltiical pressure to change its abortion-pill protocol, but for now, the agency says seven weeks is the limit for taking the drug or drugs required to terminate a pregnancy. New Hampshire law backs up the protocols. The State of New Hampshire’s Board of Pharmacy seems indifferent to that. PPNNE goes its own way.
This paints a disturbing picture, made more so by the fact that PP’s PAC makes political donations to Governor Hassan and several executive councilors, leaders of the executive branch of government of which the Board of Pharmacy is a part.
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