For decades, the population control movement has been shipping little hand-held suction abortion machines called Manual Vacuum Aspirators, or MVAs, to countries all around the world. These have been used by doctors, nurses, midwives and even, in Haiti, witchdoctors to perform abortions.
Now, in an effort to do an end-run around state pro-life laws, the pro-abortion radicals in the Biden administration apparently want to do the same thing in the U.S. They want to send MVAs through the mail and encourage its wide use.
The MVA looks like something you would use to vaccinate a horse. It consists of a large, plastic syringe with a long tube attached. The tube is inserted through the cervix into the womb, after which the abortionist pulls out the handle on the syringe, suctioning the baby out piecemeal.
The MVAs are cheap. They are portable. They do not require electricity. So they can be used to kill babies anytime, anywhere, even in the most remote parts of the world. PRI investigators have confirmed that, in some cases, they have been used up to 16 weeks gestation, long after babies can feel pain.
Some years ago I called the FDA and spoke with the head of the medical devices section about how the MVA had been approved. He told me that the MVA had been “grandfathered in” by the FDA many decades ago on the grounds that it had been invented and successfully used in the Soviet Union (!). No safety or efficacy tests were ever carried out. The FDA simply took the Communists’ word for it.
The manual vacuum aspirator looks like something you would use to vaccinate a horse.
In response to written follow-up questions from pro-life champion Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ), another FDA official wrote back that, “Regarding what clinical trial data FDA used in approving MVAs… the devices were legally-marketed prior to May 28, 1976, and therefore, FDA did not perform a pre-market review of these devices.” The newer devices that have come on the market since haven’t been reviewed either, the official wrote, because it is left up the manufacturer to decide whether such a review is needed. In other words, the abortionists are allowed to police themselves.
Still, up until recently the FDA discouraged the use of the MVA in the United States. In testimony before Congress, an FDA official was asked whether an MVA could be used to complete an RU-486 (pill) abortion. The official responded that using an MVA in case of an “incomplete abortion” or spontaneous miscarriage was “treading on very dangerous ground” and “dictat[ing] medical practice.”
The standard method of abortion in the U.S. is not manual but electric “vacuum aspiration [VA]… Most of these operations are performed in [a surgical procedure room or] operating theater using suction curettage and an electric vacuum pump.”
I doubt if those in charge of the FDA would give the same answers today. Scientific integrity has given way to radical abortion advocacy throughout the Joe Biden administration.
This is, after all, the same Joe Biden whose:
- Department of Health and Human Services is taking away the conscience rights of health care workers and has set up a taxpayer-funded national abortion hotline.
- Department of Defense is using taxpayer dollars to cover the cost of abortions for female medical personnel.
- Department of Veterans Affairs is turning VA hospitals into abortuaries, even in states where pro-life laws prohibit this.
Would such abortion zealots hesitate to put MVAs in the hands of all and sundry if they thought this would increase the number of abortions?
Ask the people of Haiti.
