It’s Long Past Time To Re-Evaluate Chemical Abortion Pills

One of the most commonly prescribed abortion pharmaceuticals in the United States today is one of the most dangerous substances in the world, according to groundbreaking new research. Sadly, it’s not as polarizing a product as Ozempic or vaccines.

According to a bombshell new study using real-world data, the abortion pill is physically wounding thousands of women per year.

When the Food & Drug Administration approved the abortion pill – mifepristone or Mifeprex – it was on the basis that clinical trials had shown a serious adverse event rate of less than 0.5%.

But the new research, which analyzed 865,727 mifepristone abortions between 2017-2023, found a serious adverse event rate of 11%. That’s twenty-two times higher than the figure cited on the drug label.

These adverse events are not mere side effects. Hemorrhage, sepsis, infection, cardiac distress, and incomplete abortions are part of the laundry list of complications suffered by women within 45 days of taking the abortion pill.

The figures come from an all-payer health claims database. Insurance companies don’t pay for things that didn’t happen. The research was published by the Ethics & Public Policy Center, which has promised more is to come.

If these serious adverse events were caused by a common antibiotic or a diabetes medication, media outrage and mass public uproar would ensue. 

Reckless conduct in the service of political ideology got us here. In the final year of the Obama administration, the Department of Health and Human Services watered down safety regulations. They allowed the abortion pill to be prescribed by non-physicians, taken at home away from the watchful eye of medical professionals, and extended the maximum gestational age at which a child could be aborted from seven weeks to ten weeks.

The Biden administration took this ghoulish crusade a step further. In 2023, they removed virtually all safeguards to the extent that a woman can now order abortion pills online, take them at home, risk bleeding out, flush her aborted child down the toilet, and go it alone, all without ever seeing a doctor.

It is up to the new Trump administration to restore some sanity. President Trump has been notoriously fickle on abortion, as has his HHS secretary, Robert F. Kennedy.

Just this week, CatholicVote joined a coalition of 30 other pro-life organizations urging President Trump to re-evaluate the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone in light of the study’s disturbing discoveries.

Both Kennedy and newly-installed FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary have expressed a commitment to prioritizing women’s safety in regard to the abortion pill. Upon questioning from Sen. Steve Daines of Montana during his confirmation hearings, Kennedy promised to study the abortion pill and take action on any new developments. Dr. Makary has expressed similar rhetoric, although he stated in late April that he had “no plans” to restrict the pill until the data could be examined thoroughly.

The question now is whether health and safety will take priority over abortion absolutism. There are too many women suffering silently for the administration to do nothing.

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Tommy Valentine is the Director of the Catholic Accountability Project at CatholicVote.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the Daily Wire.