USA – The Bad Data Backing Josh Hawley’s Attack on Abortion Pills

A new study being used to call for mifepristone restrictions relies on vague and dubious definitions of drug-related complications.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown
May 5, 2025

The abortion pill mifepristone "is not safe and effective," argue the authors of a new study that uses insurance claim data to examine adverse reactions to the pill. They claim to have found a "serious adverse event" rate of 10.93 percent, and they say this finding justifies renewed restrictions on mifepristone.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R–Mo.) seems to agree. The day the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) released its new mifepristone study, Hawley wrote to Food and Drug Administration (FDA) chief Marty Makary, urging the commissioner to "follow this new data and take all appropriate action to restore critical safeguards on the use of mifepristone."

Continued: https://reason.com/2025/05/05/the-bad-data-backing-josh-hawleys-attack-on-abortion-pills/

05.05.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

anti-choice deception

anti-choice hypocrisy

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misogyny

Food and Drug Administration

Josh Hawley

Marty Makary

misoprostol

safety of abortion pills

United States

Anti-choice

Health

USA – The Bogus ‘Category 5 Hurricane’ Hitting the Abortion Pill

By Ross Pomeroy
May 2, 2025

A new report from the Ethics & Public Policy Center, a religious conservative think tank, is being hailed amongst right-wingers as “the statistical equivalent of a category 5 hurricane hitting the prevailing narrative of the abortion industry.”

According to the report, the rate of serious adverse events amongst women who used mifepristone to medically induce an abortion is not 0.5 percent, but rather 11 percent. Mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone (needed for a pregnancy to continue), is commonly used with the ulcer prevention drug misoprostol to safely and effectively end pregnancies at fewer than ten weeks gestation.
Some on the right are using the report to cudgel FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to restrict or even ban the use of mifepristone. Makary last week said he has “no plans to take action” to restrict the availability of mifepristone. He did, however, leave the door open to take action if the data changed.

Continued: https://www.splinter.com/the-bogus-category-5-hurricane-hitting-the-abortion-pill

‘I lost control of my life’ How one Russian region made abortions almost impossible to get — without passing any new laws

April 24, 2025
Source: Glasnaya

The Russian government declared 2024 the Year of the Family. In practice, this meant tighter restrictions on reproductive rights, including limiting access to certain emergency contraceptives, outlawing so-called “childfree propaganda,” and sending priests with anti-abortion films into schools, universities, and women’s clinics. Officials and lawmakers also spent the year debating the prospect of a nationwide abortion ban.

Although no such ban has been passed yet, in some regions it’s already become a de facto reality. In places like the Republic of Karelia, women face so many barriers to accessing abortion services that many are forced to travel to neighboring regions for care. Despite national laws that still protect the right to abortion, local restrictions in Karelia have made the procedure increasingly difficult to obtain. Meduza has translated a report by the independent outlet Glasnaya detailing the growing obstacles women face when seeking abortions in the western Russian region.

Continued: https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/04/24/i-lost-control-of-my-life

USA – Lawmakers Are Trying to Hold Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Account

Post-Dobbs, the GOP has given them millions in taxpayer dollars.

Laura C. Morel, Mother Jones
April 10, 2025

Last month, during an Indiana state legislative hearing, Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz from Richmond, a small city in the eastern part of the state, discussed a resolution he filed declaring that the state’s General Assembly “strongly supports pregnancy care centers in their unique, positive contributions to the individual lives of women, men, and babies—both born and unborn,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported. “We have hospitals in rural Indiana that have no OB-GYNs,” Raatz said during the session. “Why not have an innocent individual stand alongside someone and help them make decisions and connect them with resources?” Abortion is banned in Indiana with limited exceptions.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/lawmakers-are-trying-to-hold-crisis-pregnancy-centers-to-account/

UK – JD Vance may disagree, but this anti-abortion activist isn’t a brutally censored dissident

The US vice-president’s avid concern for Livia Tossici-Bolt’s conviction is plain sinister
Catherine Bennett
Sun 6 Apr 2025

You know the feeling: you’re feeling sociable, why wouldn’t you make a sign saying “Here to talk, if you want to”, and head for a spot outside the nearest abortion clinic? And why wouldn’t some of its arriving patients want to pause before their appointments and satisfy your entirely innocent interest in their reproductive intentions?

This, give or take, amounted to the case by the prominent anti-abortion campaigner, Livia Tossici-Bolt, who was on Friday found guilty of twice breaching a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO). Her sign-holding outside a Bournemouth abortion clinic was, she had argued, not covered by a council-imposed safe zone, being “a mere invitation to speak”. And thus an invitation she could have happily extended to strangers just a little further from the clinic. But that did not suit Tossici-Bolt’s purpose. Nor does anything prevent her from staging anti-abortion rallies, distributing literature, or expressing her views on abortion anywhere except right in abortion patients’ faces outside clinics. These details, although similar regulations exist in parts of the US, routinely fail to surface in accounts by her prominent US supporters, with whose help Tossici-Bolt has been misrepresenting the illegal undermining of UK women’s reproductive rights as a noble quest for free speech.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/06/jd-vance-may-disagree-but-this-anti-abortion-activist-isnt-a-brutally-censored-dissident-livia-tossici-bolt

New York Times’ Shameful Reporting on Planned Parenthood Bolsters Right-Wing Attacks on Reproductive Healthcare Access

Why is the New York Times publishing scurrilous accusations against Planned Parenthood while ignoring the $1.7 billion unregulated antiabortion pregnancy center industry that endangers the lives of American women and girls?

PUBLISHED 2/21/2025
by Carrie N. Baker and Jenifer McKenna

The New York Times published a 3,000-word investigative report recently, claiming to have found “scores of allegations” against Planned Parenthood for misconduct, medical malpractice, mismanagement and labor violations. Released within a month of Trump’s inauguration and published on the front page of the Sunday print edition above the fold, the article appears timed to provide ammunition for the ongoing right-wing attacks on reproductive rights.

The New York Times has piled onto Trump’s executive orders obliterating reproductive rights for many Americans and his pardons of antiabortion terrorists who invaded and blocked reproductive health clinics, Republicans’ baseless lawsuits meant to bankrupt Planned Parenthood, and escalating political attacks from all three branches of the federal government aimed at defunding Planned Parenthood.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/02/21/new-york-times-planned-parenthood/

EXCLUSIVE: Here’s the Anti-Abortion Group Pulling Trump’s Strings

New documents show where Trump's 'post-birth' abortion lie comes from

Jessica Valenti
Sep 24, 2024

When Donald Trump claims that Democrats support ‘post-birth’ abortion—a noxious and dangerous lie that he’s repeated countless times on the campaign trail—the assumption has largely been that this is just ‘Trump being Trump.’ After all, we’re used to seeing the disgraced former president make up extreme stories to sow disinformation and distract from his incompetence.

But Trump’s horrific talking point that states are “executing babies” isn’t some wild off-the-cuff claim from a habitual liar. Instead, it’s a carefully crafted message fed to Trump by a powerful anti-abortion organization that positions itself as mainstream and credible. And Abortion, Every Day has the documents to prove it.

Continued: https://jessica.substack.com/p/exclusive-heres-the-anti-abortion

USA – How promises of a ‘post-Roe future’ have fallen short

By Edward-Isaac Dovere, CNN
Sun September 22, 2024

Weeks after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, a then-little-known Republican congressman from Louisiana introduced a short bill that proposed amending the Social Security Act to ensure child support payments be made for an “unborn child.”

“The Unborn Child Support Act” has gone nowhere. But the congressman has. He’s Mike Johnson, now the speaker of the House. More than two years after the Dobbs decision and nearly a year into a job that gives him control over which legislation get debated and voted on, Johnson hasn’t touched the bill or any of its provisions.

Continued: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/09/22/politics/abortion-dobbs-promises-republicans/index.html

Brazilian rape victims who have abortions may face longer in jail than rapists

Proposed law would further limit access to abortion for the 75% of reported rape victims in Brazil who are under 18

Diana Cariboni
20 June 2024

Abortion is illegal in Brazil with only three exceptions: risk to the life of the pregnant person, fetus anencephaly (a condition in which parts of the fetus’ skull and brain don’t develop) and rape. In these cases, people can seek an abortion with no time limits.

But a new bill that Brazilian conservatives are attempting to push through seeks to declare all abortions performed after week 22 of the pregnancy as homicide – and punishable with prison terms of up to 20 years.

Continued: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/brazil-new-anti-abortion-law-homicide-child-rape-victims-prison-longer-abusers/

UK – Lower abortion limit from 24 weeks, 700 doctors urge MPs

Reduction ‘long overdue’ because of increased numbers of babies born at 22 or 23 weeks now able to survive

Charles Hymas,
10 March 2024

The abortion time limit should be lowered from 24 to 22 weeks, more than 700 doctors have urged MPs. In a letter to all 650 MPs, the medics have called on them to back an amendment to the Government’s Criminal Justice Bill to reduce the time limit, in what would be the biggest change to the law for a generation.

The medical professionals – ranging from senior consultants to GPs – said a reduction is “long overdue” because of the increased numbers of babies born at 22 or 23 weeks who are now able to survive.

Continued: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/10/lower-abortion-limit-from-24-weeks-700-doctors-urge-mps/