REPORT: PhRMA Gave Over a Quarter Million Dollars to Anti-Choice RAGA

WASHINGTON, DC — A new report from government watchdog Accountable.US revealed today that Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America’s (PhRMA) gave $255,400 to Republican Attorneys General of America (RAGA), who in turn funneled millions to nine attorneys general actively campaigning against Mifepristone access and the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority to approve medicine for public use. Among the Accountable.US report details first reported by The Guardian, despite its donation, PhRMA—which represents the largest pharmaceutical companies in the United States—has publicly defended Mifepristone access, including filing two amicus briefs in April and May 2023 in support of the FDA in Alliance For Hippocratic Medicine v U.S. Food And Drug Administration. 

“It shows that PhRMA CEOs are so desperate to take away Medicare’s new negotiation power, they’re willing to team up with extremists in power who don’t share their public-facing values so long as they help stop the Biden administration from lowering costs for seniors,” added Ciccone.

KEY FINDINGS: 

• PhRMA Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary Jim Stansel voiced “serious concerns” with any court interference with the FDA’s authority, arguing later that a ruling against the FDA would “upend the successful regulatory framework on which biopharmaceutical research and development depends.”
• In February 2023, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch filed an amicus brief alongside 21 other Republican attorneys general urging the Northern District of Texas block the FDA’s approval of mailing abortion drugs, arguing the Biden administration’s FDA violated federal and state laws by allowing the mailing of mifepristone. “The FDA’s brazen attempt to not only sidestep, but outright defy federal and state laws threatens both the health of women and democracy,” said Fitch.
• In April 2023, Fitch filed an amicus brief alongside 20 other Republican attorneys general urging the Supreme Court stay the district decision, with Fitch arguing that “the Biden Administration’s shameless efforts to skirt federal and state laws with a national mail-order abortion regime flouts the Court’s ruling and the rights of the people, and puts women’s health in jeopardy.”
• In February 2023, two coalitions of 20 and 19 Republican state attorneys general sent two batches of letters to a total of seven pharmacies to warn them that “distribution of abortion pills in the mail would violate both state and federal law,” to which Walgreens, the country’s second-largest chain of pharmacies, announced they no longer intended to distribute mifepristone in those states.
• In January 2023, a coalition of 22 Republican state attorneys general sent a letter to FDA commissioner Robert Califf, arguing that the FDA’s decision to approve mifepristone “abandon[ed] its long standing restrictions on the remote prescription and administration of abortion-inducing drugs.” The letter further attacked the FDA’s decision as “illegal and dangerous,” while “prioritizing a reckless pro-abortion policy over women’s health.”