PhRMA Donates $300K to RAGA Despite Ongoing Legal Challenges

The Supreme Court is set to hear a case from the Alliance For Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), a coalition of anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ physician groups, challenging the Food And Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) original approval and mailing of the abortion drug mifepristone, which was approved by the FDA in 2000 and has been safely used to perform more than five million abortions in the U.S. This is the first direct challenge to abortion access to make its way to the Supreme Court following its 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade that had previously protected abortion access nationwide. As a result, the case is drawing significant national attention from pro-choice and pro-life advocates alike, submitting amicus briefs and letters in support of both the FDA and AHM.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) filed two amicus briefs supporting the FDA in April and May 2023. Days before filing its April 2023 amicus brief, PhRMA Executive Vice President, General Counsel, and Corporate Secretary Jim Stansel, responded to a lower district court ruling in favor of restrictions to mifepristone access, writing that “PhRMA has serious concerns with any court substituting its opinion for the FDA’s expert decision making.” Upon filing the brief, Stansel stated, “our brief aims to protect the FDA’s long-standing authority to determine whether a medicine is safe and effective for people to use, as Congress has authorized them to.” After PhRMA filed a May 2023 amicus brief in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, Stansel stated, “the district court’s ruling would upend the successful regulatory framework on which biopharmaceutical research and development depends.”

However, throughout FY2022 and the first six months of 2023, PhRMA contributed $255,400 to the Republican Attorney Generals Association (RAGA). As PhRMA was donating to RAGA, RAGA was directing $2.2 million to nine conservative attorneys general across the country continuing to advocate against the distribution of mifepristone, often in direct contradiction to PhRMA and their own amicus briefs:

• 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.

• Also in February 2023, 21 Republican state attorneys general filed an amicus brief defending West Virginia against a challenge from GenBioPro, the country’s only manufacturer of generic mifepristone, arguing that states have the right to ban a drug outright if they choose to.

• 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.”

This discovery comes on the heels of the recent revelation of PhRMA’s giving $530,000 to right-wing fringe groups intimately involved with Project 2025, which recently published a policy roadmap calling for the reversal of mifepristone’s FDA approval as part of further restrictions to abortion access. The Heritage Foundation, architects of Project 2025, received $125,000 from PhRMA in 2022 and has criticized President Biden’s FDA as “doing the bidding of the abortion industry at the expense of women’s health and safety” in a move to “turn local pharmacies into abortion clinics.”