Donald Trump’s administration is looking to put Americans first. One way they’re doing that is by starting initiatives to keep Americans healthy.
And the Trump admin was pushed to axe this deadly drug that could impact millions of Americans.
Abortion Pill Safety Under Scrutiny as Medical Groups Demand FDA Review
As Planned Parenthood challenges the Trump administration’s “big, beautiful bill” aimed at defunding abortion providers, a coalition of pro-life medical organizations is pressing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to reassess the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone.
This call to action, detailed in a letter obtained by Fox News Digital, comes from six anti-abortion medical groups representing roughly 30,000 professionals, including the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, and the American College of Family Medicine.
The letter urges the FDA to reinstate safety measures for mifepristone, which have been taken away since its approval in 2000. According to the Guttmacher Institute, medication abortion, primarily using mifepristone, accounts for 63% of all abortions in the United States. Mifepristone works by blocking progesterone, a hormone essential for sustaining pregnancy, effectively depriving the fetus of nutrients. A follow-up drug, misoprostol, is then taken to expel the fetus.
Under the Biden administration, the FDA expanded access to mifepristone, allowing prescriptions through telemedicine without requiring in-person doctor visits and permitting the drug to be mailed. However, the coalition’s letter argues that recent data “strongly suggests” that mifepristone has harmed hundreds of thousands of women, citing serious adverse effects such as hemorrhage, sepsis, and incomplete abortions that require surgical intervention.
The letter references two May reports—one from the Foundation for the Restoration of America and another from the Ethics and Public Policy Center. These studies, analyzing health insurance records of 330 million U.S. patients and 860,000 mifepristone prescriptions, found that 10.93% of women experienced severe complications like sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or surgical intervention within 45 days of using the drug.
“The data strongly suggest that mifepristone poses a far greater risk of causing harm than previously stated. In fact, the risk of serious complications may be 22 times higher than previously disclosed,” the letter says.
In contrast, Planned Parenthood’s website claims that chemical abortion is “safer than many other medicines like penicillin, Tylenol, and Viagra.” The pro-life groups counter that mifepristone is “a high-risk abortion-inducing drug” known to cause medical emergencies.
They are calling on the FDA to conduct its own analysis of real-world data to evaluate mifepristone’s safety for both adults and adolescents. The groups also advocate for reinstating pre-2016 safety protocols, such as limiting the drug’s use to seven weeks of gestation, requiring in-person dispensing, and mandating follow-up appointments. They emphasize the importance of ultrasounds to confirm gestational age, which they argue is “crucial to accurately dating a pregnancy and determining the risk of complications.”
The letter stresses the ethical necessity of informed consent, stating, “A basic tenet of medical ethics is informed consent – which requires a review of accurate risks and benefits of any proposed intervention that is specific to the patient sitting in front of us which is based on actual data, not ideologically-driven rhetoric.”
It adds, “Americans must be able to trust that no matter what, the FDA will rely on the most robust safety standards before and after approving any drug and that they can have truly informed consent by knowing what the risks to taking FDA-approved drugs are.”
The safety of mifepristone has sparked heated legal battles, including a 2024 Supreme Court case brought by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. The court dismissed the challenge, ruling that the group lacked standing.
Dr. Jack Resneck Jr., then president of the American Medical Association, warned that restricting mifepristone “would have devastating health consequences for people living in states where abortion is still legal,” citing “hundreds upon hundreds of peer-reviewed clinical studies and decades of evidence-based research” that affirm mifepristone’s safety, comparable to ibuprofen.
However, critics of Ethics and Public Policy report, including Dr. Céline Gounder of CBS News and KFF Health News, have questioned its validity, pointing to a lack of transparency and the absence of a comparison group to assess outcomes in pregnant women not using mifepristone. Danco, the manufacturer of mifepristone, defended the drug’s “established safety and efficacy record” in a statement to CBS.
Dr. Christina Francis, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs, condemned the FDA’s deregulation of mifepristone, stating it “subjects pregnant women to an unacceptably low standard of care, leaving them vulnerable to life-threatening complications, and empowers abusers and traffickers who wish to force unwanted abortions on their victims.”
She urged the FDA to prioritize patient safety by reexamining the drug and restoring critical safeguards.
Other signatories to the letter include the Christian Medical and Dental Association, the American College of Pediatricians, and the Coptic Medical Association of North America.
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