The United States Secretary of Health and Human Services is assuring the Republican-controlled Senate that he has ordered a review of the abortion pill as concerns about the safety of chemical abortions resurface following the publication of a new report.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appeared before the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Wednesday, where Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., asked Kennedy if he intended to conduct a “top-to-bottom review” of the abortion pill, marketed in the U.S. as mifepristone, as he had previously promised in testimony before the senators.
“I’ve asked Marty Makary, who’s the director of [the Food and Drug Administration], to do a complete review and to report back,” Kennedy replied. As he questioned Kennedy, Hawley brought up a recent study conducted by the Ethics and Public Policy Center that found more than 10% of women who took the abortion pills experienced adverse effects, including emergency room visits, hemorrhages, seeking follow-up surgical abortions after the abortion pills failed, infection, hospitalization, ectopic pregnancies, transfusion and sepsis.
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Kennedy addressed Hawley’s line of questioning by describing the report’s findings as “alarming,” suggesting that the FDA would take action to inform women of the risks of mifepristone. “At the very least, the label should be changed,” he said.
As the pro-life group National Right to Life noted in a statement reacting to the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s report, the FDA’s use label for mifepristone states that “Serious adverse reactions were reported in <0.5% of women” in clinical trials.
When questioning Kennedy, Hawley highlighted how the rate of adverse reactions among women who had taken the abortion pills in the Ethics and Public Policy Center study, which examined the results of 865,727 chemical abortions from 2017-2023, was 22 times higher than the rate measured in clinical trials.
While Kennedy told Hawley he did not have a specific timeline as to when he could expect a review of the abortion pill to be completed, he assured the senator that it would be a “top priority.” Hawley also asked Kennedy whether he would “consider whether it’s necessary now to put back in place the long-standing safety protocols that always accompanied mifepristone until the last administration.”
Hawley identified the safety protocols eliminated by the Biden administration, known as the risk evaluation mitigation strategies, as “in-person dispensing, doctor visits, [and] screening for ectopic pregnancies.” Kennedy replied by asserting that Makary will make a recommendation, adding, “I feel that the policy changes will ultimately go through the White House, through President Trump.” Nonetheless, Kennedy vowed that he would make a recommendation based on the data.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center report explicitly called for reinstating safety protocols rolled back by both the Obama and Biden administrations.
In addition to the ones mentioned by Hawley, the study also urged the re-implementation of the requirement that the abortion pill be prescribed by doctors instead of other medical staff, mandate reporting about all adverse events that can result from taking the abortion pill, not only deaths, as well as limiting access to the abortion pill to women who are seven weeks pregnant or less.
Kennedy’s testimony on Capitol Hill and his insistence that Makary would lead an investigation into the abortion pill comes less than a month after the FDA administrator maintained that he had “no plans to take action” on the abortion pill. At the same time, Makary said, “There is an ongoing set of data that is coming into the FDA on mifepristone” and stressed that “if the data suggests something or tells us that there’s a real signal, we can’t promise we’re not going to act on that data.”
Makary made those comments a week before the release of the Ethics and Public Policy report.
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
