A group of senators has sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi, asking the Department of Justice (DOJ) to investigate the manufacturers of the abortion pill over concerns they may have misled women about the regimen’s safety and efficacy.
Key Takeaways:
- Chemical abortions are committed through a two-step process using mifepristone and misoprostol.
- The abortion industry has long claimed this process is safe and effective, while safety protocols around mifepristone have been dismantled by pro-abortion administrations.
- New research has raised questions about how dangerous chemical abortions could truly be.
- Three senators sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi asking her to investigate the manufacturers of mifepristone and whether they have misled the public about its safety.
The Backstory:
The abortion pill (mifepristone 200mg) was originally approved by the FDA in 2000, and Risk Evaluation and Mitigation System (REMS) requirements were put in place. The abortion pill process consists of two steps: first, the mother takes mifepristone, which deprives the preborn child of nutrients needed to survive. However, mifepristone alone is not always effective, so it is followed by misoprostol one to two days later, which induces bleeding and contractions to expel the body of the baby.
Initially, the abortion pill regimen was only permitted to be taken through seven weeks gestation.
In 2016, the Obama administration began weakening the REMS, allowing the abortion pill to be taken through 10 weeks, while also removing the requirement to report non-fatal adverse events (complications) and the requirement to take mifepristone in-person with a clinician.
Only deaths associated with mifepristone would therefore be required for reporting.
Later, when President Joe Biden took office, the standards were weakened even further, with pills allowed to be sent through the mail, and distributed through retail pharmacies. The requirement for the pills to be given out in person were permanently eliminated.
Meanwhile, as these safety standards were stripped away, the abortion industry insisted chemical abortions were safe — even safer than Tylenol. Women were told to lie to emergency room staff if they experienced complications, instead attributing the complications to natural miscarriage — making it impossible to truly know how many women may have been injured.
The Details:
Three Republican senators — Steve Daines (Mont.), Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), and Jim Banks (Ind.) — sent a letter, obtained by the Daily Signal, to AG Pam Bondi requesting an investigation into abortion pill manufacturers.
“We write to you regarding a serious public health failure that endangers countless American women,” they wrote. “In light of new data, we request an investigation into whether drug manufacturers have misrepresented mifepristone’s safety and efficacy — placing hundreds of thousands of women at risk.”
The lawmakers pointed out that the majority of abortions are now committed using abortion pills, and that safety requirements have been progressively weakened in recent years. Furthermore, the senators argued the issue is one of health and safety.
They wrote:
The real risk of serious adverse events to American women is also unconscionably downplayed on the label, which reports an adverse-effect rate of just 0.5%. The label is appallingly wrong.
Between 2017 and 2023, women were administered over 865,000 mifepristone abortions that were charged to a public or private payor. Of those, almost a full 5% of women — nearly 41,000 — required serious to severe level emergency room (ER) visits related to mifepristone. Over 28,000 experienced hemorrhaging. More than 11,000 reported infection. At least 824 women had life-threatening sepsis. And well over 24,000 went on to need surgery to complete what the pill could not. All told, a full 10.93% of patients — more than one out of every ten women — endured some kind of serious adverse event after taking mifepristone.
In other words, women suffer from complications at a rate about 22 times higher than the drastically underreported 0.5% rate conveyed by the label.
The senators added, “For every woman that the mifepristone label admits it could potentially harm, over 20 additional women suffer serious adverse events. Quite frankly, this is outrageous. And the American people deserve better.”
Zoom In:
A recent analysis was cited by the senators as their reasoning for requesting an investigation. The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) found that nearly 11% of women (10.93%) experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other serious or life-threatening adverse events after taking mifepristone for an abortion. As the senators noted, this means one in 10 women experience a serious complication, which is 22 times higher than the “less than 0.5 percent” rate reported by the FDA on the mifepristone label.
This isn’t the only information to find mifepristone is more dangerous than reported; in Ireland, another recent study found that 12% of women who underwent chemical abortions between January 2019 and December 2022 experienced complications severe enough to require a visit to the emergency room, with 16% suffering incomplete abortions.
Still another study showed that women were severely unprepared for how painful the chemical abortion process would be.
The Bottom Line:
Mifepristone is much more dangerous than many women realize. The question now is whether or not abortion pill manufacturers knew it and intentionally misled the public about it.
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