The War on Mifepristone: How Junk Science and False Narratives Threaten US Abortion Access

October 2025
Kelly Baden, Joerg Dreweke, Rachel K. Jones, Guttmacher Institute

False information and faulty science regarding the safety of the drug mifepristone, which is used in the vast majority of medication abortions in the United States, is at the center of a narrative that may further reduce abortion access. Mifepristone, and medication abortion more broadly, is safe, effective and widely used in the United States and globally. Despite its demonstrated safety, relentless policy and legal attacks aim to restrict or even ban access to this method of abortion.

This analysis will explore and counter several pernicious aspects of such attacks. These include the misrepresentation of normal signs a medication abortion is working as intended—for example, cramping or bleeding—as serious medical complications; and the conflation of routine or precautionary care-seeking by medication abortion patients with emergency treatment for serious adverse events.

Continued: https://www.guttmacher.org/2025/10/war-mifepristone-how-junk-science-and-false-narratives-threaten-us-abortion-access

Despite ban removal, women’s access to abortion pills faces legal void in Korea

21 Oct. 2025

Six years after Korea’s Constitutional Court struck down the country’s abortion ban, women seeking to end a pregnancy still face a legal void. The government has yet to approve abortion pills, and thousands are turning to the internet, where unverified drugs circulate in an expanding underground market.

Authorities uncovered 2,641 cases of illegal online sales of abortion medication since 2021, when the abortion ban lost effect, according to new data from the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety submitted to Rep. Nam In-soon of the Democratic Party on Tuesday.

Continued: https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/news/2025-10-21/national/socialAffairs/Despite-ban-removal-womens-access-to-abortion-pills-faces-legal-void-in-Korea/2425241

21.10.2025

Ministry of Food and Drug Safety

Using telemedicine to improve access to medication abortion in Rwanda

August 14, 2025
UC Berkeley Public Health

In recent years, the African nation of Rwanda has expanded legal grounds for abortion. But the law requires that a doctor authorize the procedure, creating obstacles for women who live in areas with few physicians.

To determine whether a hybrid telemedicine/in-person appointment model could expand access to medication abortions, researchers from UC Berkeley School of Public Health’s Bixby Center for Population, Health, and Sustainability, working with local health care partners and the Rwandan Ministry of Health, launched a pilot program in the predominantly rural Musanze District in Northern Rwanda.

Continued: https://publichealth.berkeley.edu/articles/spotlight/research/telemedicine-in-rwanda

14.08.2025

Research

Bixby Center for Population Health and Sustainability

Dr. Ndola Prata

Karen Weidert

medication abortion

Rwandan Ministry of Health

telemedicine abortion

Medication abortions drove up number of US procedures after Roe’s repeal, study shows

Abortion pill provision rates were also more than three times higher in states that ban abortion compared with those that do not

Carter Sherman
Mon 11 Aug 2025

An abortion provider shipped almost 120,000 packs of abortion pills to US residents between July 2023 and August 2024 – nearly 100,000 of whom lived in states that outlaw the procedure or have laws on the books that ban the mailing of abortion pills, according to a new study published in the prestigious medical journal Jama on Monday.

To the shock of experts, the number of abortions performed in the US rose in the three years since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and paved the way for more than a dozen states to ban virtually all abortions. Much of that rise has been driven by the use of abortion pills, or medication abortion, and providers’ ability to supply the pills through telehealth.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/aug/11/medication-abortions-performed-study

11.08.2025

News

Research

#WeCount

abortion pill provision rates

Society of Family Planning

United States

Health

Human Rights

Improving access to medical abortion in Australian primary care

Primary care providers play an integral part in medical abortion access, but many barriers are preventing uptake of medical abortion provision.

Annika Howells
Issue 25 / 30 June 2025

Access to safe and affordable abortion is essential health care and a human right.

Medical abortion — via administration of the combined mifepristone–misoprostol regimen (MS-2 Step) — is becoming more accessible, thanks to increased access via telehealth models and subsidisation in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

However, medical abortion is still not widely available in primary care, and geographic and financial barriers remain.

Continued: https://insightplus.mja.com.au/2025/25/improving-access-to-medical-abortion-in-australian-primary-care/

30.06.2025

Commentary

belief-based care denial

conscientious objection

Dr Greta Skahill

medication abortion

mifepristone and misoprostol

MS-2 Step

primary care providers and abortion

Three Years Post-Roe: The Escalating Campaign to Make Abortion Inaccessible Nationwide

Three years after Dobbs, the antiabortion movement is escalating efforts to block access to medication abortion, criminalize interstate travel, and impose a nationwide ban—threatening reproductive freedom across all 50 states.

June 2, 2025
by Kelly Baden, Ms. Magazine

It has been three years since Roe v. Wade was overturned, unleashing legal chaos and confusion for patients and providers across the United States. But even though abortion is banned in many U.S. states, the antiabortion movement is only intensifying its campaign to restrict abortion access nationwide. Overturning Roe is just the beginning; since then, the movement has pursued a range of strategies to make abortion completely inaccessible no matter where you live.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2025/06/02/three-years-dobbs-roe-abortion-overturn-medication-abortion-pills-travel-state-nationwide-ban/

02.06.2025

traveling for abortion

Colombian Online Abortion Pill Market Surges Despite Legal Pathways Expanding

May 24, 2025

Although Colombia’s abortion law is among the most liberal in Latin America, a new study finds a flourishing internet trade in medication-abortion pills sold without prescriptions. Its revelations help explain why thousands still sidestep clinics and rely on digital storefronts.

A Rapidly Changing Abortion Landscape
Walk into a public hospital in Bogotá today, and, in theory, you can request a no-cost abortion up to 24 weeks of pregnancy. That reality would have been unthinkable at the turn of the millennium when any termination could land a woman behind bars. Court rulings in 2006 cracked the door open for a few medical exceptions, and by 2022, the Constitutional Court swung it wide, fully decriminalizing abortion through the second trimester. Newspapers hailed the decision as a regional beacon; activists toasted Colombia’s new status as Latin America’s most progressive jurisdiction on reproductive rights.

Continued: https://latinamericanpost.com/life/colombian-online-abortion-pill-market-surges-despite-legal-pathways-expanding/

24.05.2025

News

abortion pills

Colombia Constitutional Court

medication abortion

mifepristone

misoprostol

self-managed abortion

Malaysia Punishing Women For Abortion Is Not The Answer

The Galen Centre calls for law reform, after a Melaka court sentenced a 21-year-old woman to jail for self-managed abortion. Abortion has been lawful in Malaysia since 1989 when Section 312 of the Penal Code was amended to allow termination of pregnancy.

By Azrul Mohd Khalib
23 May 2025

The recent nine-month custodial sentence imposed by the Ayer Keroh Magistrate’s Court on a young woman who ended a five-month pregnancy with medication obtained online, highlights the urgent need to modernise laws that continue to criminalise women while failing to address the root causes of unplanned pregnancies.

No woman or girl should face prison for exercising autonomy over her body. Malaysia’s Penal Code still contains provisions dating back from and written in the 19th century. They do not reflect current medical practice, World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations, human-rights standards, or the realities faced by women, especially young women, the poor and the unmarried.

Continued: https://codeblue.galencentre.org/2025/05/punishing-women-for-abortion-is-not-the-answer-azrul-mohd-khalib/

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/

India – Haryana govt shuts 300 abortion centres, another 23 issued show-cause notices

The Haryana State Drugs Controller has been tasked with compiling a list of wholesalers and stockists of medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) kits, restricting their sale exclusively to registered MTP centres.

By: Express News Service
April 13, 2025

The Haryana government Thursday announced that the registrations of 300 medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) centres in the state have been cancelled.

The closed centres had allegedly failed to share and update information concerning its gynaecologists and abortion data, among others.

Continued: https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/abortion-centres-shut-haryana-government-notices-9940381/

14.04.2025