A leading trade group for pharmaceutical companies has asked the US Supreme Court will not fragment the power of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in an upcoming case cut access to a drug commonly used in abortions. But in a move that seems to undermine his own position, it has also given more than $125,000 to a Republican organization supporting Republicans who want the Supreme Court to do the exact opposite.
The trade group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, or PhRMA, lobbies on behalf of brand-name drug manufacturers. In October and January, it submitted a letter in an upcoming Supreme Court case that threatens to limit access to a commonly used abortion drug called mifepristone.
The Supreme Court will consider a ruling by the conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals that, if upheld, would significantly roll back access to the drug, which has been expanded in a series of FDA regulatory actions. The Supreme Court justices could also rule on some of the more technical elements of the case, such as whether the anti-abortion activists have the legal right to bring the case in the first place.
Involving the FDA in the abortion wars in the United States could have enormous consequences for all kinds of drugs. PhRMA warned in January short.
“For decades, biopharmaceutical companies, healthcare providers, patients, and other stakeholders have relied on the FDA’s expert scientific judgment on drug approval, labeling, and post-approval marketing requirements,” attorneys for PhRMA wrote. The federal appeals court ruling, they added, “threatens endless litigation by inviting virtually any health care provider to file a lawsuit challenging drug approvals or subsequent changes.”
Yet according to research by Responsible.US independently verified by the Guardian, PhRMA donated more than $125,000 in May 2023 to the Republican Attorneys General Association (Raga), which aims to elect and re-elect GOP state attorneys general. Just a few weeks before that donation, 19 of Raga’s Republican attorneys general filed a brief with the Supreme Court claiming that the FDA’s approval of mifepristone had “fundamental legal flaws.” In fact, the agency’s approach to mifepristone, the attorneys general suggested, violated federal law.
In January 2023, several of these attorneys general also sent a letter to the FDA commissioner, accusing the agency of “abdicating its responsibility to protect women’s health.”
A few months later, in April 2023, a federal judge in Texas ruled in favor of a coalition of anti-abortion groups that asked him to completely suspend the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone. The Fifth Circuit narrowed that ruling and reversed more recent actions by the FDA, which have expanded access to mifepristone since 2016. The Biden administration and the manufacturer of mifepristone have appealed this decision to the Supreme Court.
More than 100 different studies, conducted over different years and countries, have concluded that mifepristone is safe. found a 2023 New York Times review.
“PhRMA claims to oppose this lawsuit that could deny women access to the safe, widely used mifepristone, yet they have funded the highest political group for anti-choice attorneys general who further threaten access,” said Caroline Ciccone, chairman of the nonpartisan government. watchdog group Accountable.US.
Trade groups like PhRMA typically don’t donate to pursue some ideological goal, said Sarah Bryner, director of research and strategy at OpenSecrets, which tracks money in American politics. They are interested in bringing their lobbyists into the offices of whoever is in power.
“They’re looking for access to members (of Congress) and elected officials as soon as those people come into power,” Bryner said. “We have heard from members in the past that there are 24 hours in a day and you have to sleep, so who are you meeting with? Normally you want to have meetings with your constituents and then also with the people who give you money.”
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To improve their chances of maintaining that access, corporations and the groups that represent their interests regularly and quietly donate to both sides of the aisle in American politics. Three weeks after making a $125,000 donation to the Republican Attorneys General Association, PhRMA donated another $125,000 to the group’s Democratic rival, the Democratic Attorneys General Association.
Even political earthquakes rarely shake their approach to political donations. When the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, major US companies that indicated they would help workers circumvent state abortion bans continued to financially support political candidates who supported abortion bans, a Guardian analysis shows. Following the riots at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, several major companies pledged to suspend or reconsider their donations to politicians who refused to announce the results of the 2020 election. But by early 2023, more than 70 companies had made such promises gave more than 10 million dollars to election deniers, Politico reported this.
“You may hear messages, you may see temporary pauses in giving and you may see people not giving to people who are very outspoken and on the fringes, like Marjorie Taylor Greene for example, or people in Alabama right now,” said Bryner. “But I think bipartisanship generally doesn’t go anywhere.”
“We work with a variety of groups that have a wide range of different policy views and priorities,” Alex Schriver, senior vice president of public affairs at PhRMA, said in a statement. “We may not agree on all issues, but we believe that engagement and dialogue are important to advancing health care policies that support innovation, a highly skilled workforce and access to life-saving medicines.”
The rulings limiting the availability of mifepristone are now suspended. The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the case in late March.