The Battle Over The Abortion Pill 

In the post-Roe landscape, pro-life advocates can now effectively work to impose tough restrictions on abortions in states across the nation – but it’s not enough. And that has everything to do with the proliferation of the abortion pill mifepristone, and how it continues to be prescribed throughout the nation. 

“This is the Wild West, and this is the greatest public health crisis,” Live Action founder Lila Rose told The Daily Wire on Thursday. “The on-demand sale of the abortion pill via our mail system is the biggest public health crisis that we are facing.”

Restrictions on the pill have become wildly lax. During the Biden years, for example, mifepristone was permitted to be sent through the mail. Now, more than 60% of all abortions include abortion pills, a significant increase from past years. 

Pro-lifers want the pill taken off the market, not only for killing unborn humans, but because of how dangerous they say the pill is for women, especially when guardrails are virtually nonexistent. 

“There are thousands of women going to the emergency room with severe health complications, and sometimes life-threatening health complications because of the abortion pill,” Rose said. “There are hundreds of thousands of children being killed in this country annually by the abortion pill. It’s our biggest public health crisis.”

“The report from the Ethics and Public Policy Center proves that one out of every 24 women are landing in the emergency room, that there are severe health complications for one out of every 10 women,” Rose continued. “Live Action’s investigation that just broke [Thursday] proves that Planned Parenthood is not checking gestational age, they are not providing ultrasounds. They are sending pills across state lines, sending them to the homes of friends of the person who is supposedly purchasing the pill with no follow-up care.”

As The Daily Wire’s Leif Le Mahieu previously reported, abortions have continued to rise since 2023. The increase can largely be pinned on abortion-by-mail, even in states with “abortion bans” in place. 

While pro-life advocates like Rose give high praise to the Trump administration for a number of big pro-life victories, they believe the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) can do more to address the proliferation of the abortion pill. 

“The FDA can, in a moment, make a rule to ensure that the abortion pill requires at least one doctor’s visit,” Rose said. “There used to be three required doctor’s visits, and this was under the Clinton administration, when the pill was illegally under an emergency order fast-tracked in this country and put on the market. So that’s something the FDA could do tomorrow.”

“The FDA could pull mifepristone used as an abortifacient from the market tomorrow. Approval for that could happen within 24 hours – the administration has everything they need,” she said, adding that state-level data can be reviewed by the FDA. 

Speaking to The Daily Wire on Wednesday, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary stressed that a comprehensive review of the pill is something that will be done, and is currently in the data acquisition phase. However, he said, the science takes time. 

“Some people think that study can be done overnight, but a proper study at any university takes time,” Makary said. “This is, in fact, my background at Johns Hopkins for 22 years. Being on the faculty, we did many of these large studies and sometimes they took a year if we did them right. Now, in the government, there are some delays associated with procurement, acquiring databases – and the government shutdown was definitely a bit of a setback.”

“But we are committed to getting this study done expeditiously, and I can assure you that there are no attempts to delay any such study,” he said. “People deserve to know the answer.”

Hundreds of thousands of pro-lifers are expected in Washington, D.C. Friday for the annual March for Life, where mifepristone will certainly be a topic of discussion. But so will major pro-life wins, which come in large part due to the Trump administration. 

Just one day before the rally, for example, the National Institutes of Health announced that it will end, effective immediately, the use of abortion-derived human fetal tissue in federally-funded research, The Daily Wire first reported. 

“The only ban is on, you have an abortion specifically to terminate the baby, and then the tissue then gets sold, that’s what’s being banned,” NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya told Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro on Thursday. If someone wants to donate tissue from a miscarriage, the NIH can use that for research, he noted. 

“Now that there is better technology, there’s no scientific harm to this, we’re still going to be able to use the science we need, … while at the same time getting rid of this use of aborted fetal tissue which so many people, including me, find morally abhorrent,” Bhattacharya added. 

Rose also praised the Trump administration for major pro-life victories. 

“Certainly the pardoning of the pro-life prisoners last year was a huge win by President Trump,” she told The Daily Wire. “It was also a huge win for Congress to finally remove federal funding from Planned Parenthood for one year – and that was signed, of course, by President Trump. … There have been dozens of Planned Parenthood facilities that are shut down because of the lack of taxpayer funding. Those are historic wins for the movement.”