USA – How shoddy science is fueling a charge to restrict abortion pill access

The FDA has been tasked with re-evaluating the safety of mifepristone after a flawed report claimed it has a high rate of serious complications.

May 19, 2025
By Aria Bendix

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has tasked the Food and Drug Administration with conducting a safety review of mifepristone, a pill used in most U.S. abortions. Kennedy said this week that the review was warranted due to an “alarming” new report on serious adverse events released last month.

“Clearly it indicates that, at very least, the label should be changed,” he told Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., at a Senate budget hearing on Wednesday. “I’ve asked Marty Makary, who’s the director of FDA, to do a complete review and to report back.”

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/shoddy-science-fueling-charge-restrict-abortion-pill-access-rcna207034

20.05.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

anti-choice fake science

fake science

Food and Drug Administration

Josh Hawley

Marty Makary

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

United States

Anti-choice

Human Rights

USA – Abortion providers challenge FDA’s remaining mifepristone restrictions in federal court

“It’s really important that we protect … safe access to medication abortion no matter where people live — Virginia is playing a key role in the South right now,” Whole Woman’s Health Alliance founder and president Amy Hagstrom Miller said Monday.

By: Sofia Resnick and Charlotte Rene Woods
May 19, 2025

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — Abortion pills — and questions over their inherent safety — were back in federal court Monday. Unlike a lawsuit rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court last year, plaintiffs this time are not anti-abortion activists arguing medication abortion should be banned, but abortion providers arguing the remaining restrictions should be lifted to match the drug’s 25-year record of safety and efficacy.

The suit seeks to make abortion pills more accessible by removing several existing restrictions on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s mifepristone-misoprostol regimen first approved in 2000. The drug was approved under the FDA’s drug safety program called Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS), provisions of which have been steadily eliminated over time but not fully.

Continued: https://virginiamercury.com/2025/05/19/abortion-providers-challenge-fdas-remaining-mifepristone-restrictions-in-federal-court/

USA – RFK Jr. Is Coming for Abortion Pills

And he’s relying on bogus science to make his case.

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones
May 15, 2025

Earlier this month, the Trump administration scored seemingly positive headlines when it asked a federal court to dismiss a case brought by three Republican states seeking to restrict telehealth access to mifepristone, the first of two drugs used in a medication abortion.

Several news outlets claimed in headlines that the administration would “defend” access to the pills, despite the fact that Project 2025 and several of Trump’s top appointees have made it clear that they believe access to mifepristone—which, along with the second drug, misoprostol, now account for more than 60 percent of all abortions that occur nationwide—should be drastically rolled back, as I have previously reported. In reality, the administration merely argued the states do not have standing to sue and did not weigh in on the underlying issue of access to the pills.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/rfk-jr-is-coming-for-abortion-pills/

RFK Jr orders mifepristone review as anti-abortion groups push for ban

Health secretary cites ‘new data’ that emerged from flawed study conservatives are using to pressure US government

Susan Rinkunas
Wed 14 May 2025

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Wednesday that he had directed the FDA to review the regulations around the abortion pill mifepristone.

The review, he said, was necessary due to “new data” – data that emerged from a flawed analysis that top US anti-abortion groups are now using to pressure the Trump administration to reimpose restrictions on the abortion pill, if not pull it from the market entirely.

“It’s alarming,” Kennedy told the Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, during a congressional hearing. “Clearly, it indicates that, at very least, the label should be changed.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/14/rfk-jr-fda-abortion-pill-mifepristone

The Forgotten Mother of the Contraceptive Pill

Long overshadowed by more famous names, Katharine Dexter McCormick used her fortune and fierce determination to quietly bankroll one of the most revolutionary inventions in women’s history: the birth control pill.

May 8, 2025
by Josie Cox, Ms. Magazine

Almost exactly three years ago, I spent an afternoon standing outside McCormick Hall, an all-women’s undergraduate residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

It was a quiet day in May. Term had likely ended for the summer. But as a few students and their friends and families trickled in and out of the building, I politely stopped them with a simple question: “Excuse me, do you know who is—or who was—McCormick?”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/05/08/katharine-dexter-mccormick-birth-control/

08.05.2025

Commentary

birth control pill

Food and Drug Administration

history of contraception

Katharine Dexter McCormick

USA – ‘Rolling Thunder’: Inside conservatives’ strategy to curb abortion pill access

Abortion opponents hope a new report will spur the GOP to ban abortion pills and defund Planned Parenthood.

By Alice Miranda Ollstein
May 7, 2025

The nation’s most influential anti-abortion groups have a new plan to roll back access to the procedure for millions of Americans in what they’re calling the “biggest opportunity for the pro-life movement” since toppling Roe v. Wade.

The effort, which the groups have privately named “Rolling Thunder,” is the movement’s first concerted attempt under the second Trump administration to target abortion pills, and aims to convince the FDA, Congress and courts to crack down on their use.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/07/anti-abortion-pill-gameplan-rolling-thunder-00331933

07.05.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs

Americans United for Life

Angela Vasquez-Giroux

anti-choice anti-science

anti-choice cruelty

anti-choice dishonesty

anti-choice extremism

anti-choice junk science

anti-choice lies

anti-choice misogyny

Brittni Frederiksen

Colson Center for Christian Worldview

Dr. Christina Francis

Ethics and Public Policy Center

FDA

Food and Drug Administration

Marjorie Dannenfelser

Marty Makary

mifepristone

Planned Parenthood

Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

RollingThunder

Ryan Anderson

safety of abortion pills

Students for Life

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

United States

Activism

Anti-choice

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

The Forgotten—and Incredibly Important—History of the Abortion Pill

Mifepristone took longer to get approved than most drugs—but not because it was unsafe.

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
Feb 7, 2025

At his Senate confirmation hearings to head the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. surprised no one by admitting that he planned to order a new review of the safety of abortion pills. While Kennedy claimed that President Donald Trump has not taken a position—yet—on medication abortion, “he’s made it clear to me that he wants me to look at the safety issues,” Kennedy said. “And I’ll ask [agencies] to do that.”

This, of course, is exactly what anti-abortion groups have been pushing for. Since 2022, when the US Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, abortion opponents have been ramping up unfounded claims that mifepristone and misoprostol are dangerous. Their efforts have included a flurry of letters to the new administration, explicit directives in the far right’s Project 2025 blueprint for the second Trump term, and a barrage of ever-more-extreme lawsuits and state bills.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/abortion-pill-forgotten-history-attacks-mifepristone-ru486-anti-abortion-extremists-new-book/

07.02.2025

Commentary

abortion pills

Abortion Pills: US History and Politics

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization

Feminist Majority Foundation

Food and Drug Administration

manual vacuum aspiration

Reproductive Health Technologies Project

Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies

Roussel-Uclaf

RU-486

Searle

Shanghai Hualian Pharmaceutical Company

shield laws

telehealth abortion

telehealth clinics

telemedicine abortion

USA – Reproductive rights and justice groups plan for Trump’s return

By: Sofia Resnick
January 18, 2025

In the days following President-elect Donald Trump’s win last November, a national abortion-assistance hotline was being inundated with calls. “They were confused about whether abortion was even still legal in the country, because they have heard the rhetoric around Trump’s position on abortion,” said Brittany Fonteno, the president and CEO of the National Abortion Federation.

The association of abortion providers runs what Fonteno says is the largest financial assistance program for people seeking abortions and is among the many groups preparing for another potentially destabilizing shift in U.S. reproductive health policy after Trump takes office Monday.

Continued: https://lailluminator.com/2025/01/18/abortion-trump-2/