Are factories making abortion pills outside the U.S. safe?

ProPublica recently reviewed inspection reports of several factories that manufacture generic drugs outside of the United States, and it described what it found as "really gross" and "makes your skin crawl."

The information raises concerns about the factories at which generic abortion pills are manufactured in places like India, China, and Spain.

The Details:

"Ninety percent of prescriptions filled in the U.S. are for generics," claimed the pro-abortion ProPublica. It noted that "many of these factories are overseas, in India and China." Live Action has consistently reported on concerns surrounding the manufacturers of abortion drugs.

Abortion Pill Manufacturers

Live Action's abortion pill report described abortion drug manufacturers:

1). Danco Laboratories

In 2000, Danco Laboratories, a highly clandestine “pharmaceutical company,” was granted “an exclusive license from the Population Council to manufacture, market, and distribute Mifeprex [Early Option Pill Mifeprex (Mifepristone Tablets, 200mg)] in the United States."

Danco was originally set up as a sub-licensee of the Council and received initial funding from organizations dedicated to abortion philanthropy. For instance, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation invested an excess of $14.2 million in Danco and consistently provides financing for studies attempting to prove the safety of the abortion pill.

Interestingly, Packard has also contributed to ProPublica.

2). GenBioPro (GBP)

GenBioPro, the initial generic manufacturer of the abortion pill, obtained FDA approval in 2019. By 2021, the company boasted that it held a significant share of the abortion pill market.

Similar to the highly secretive brand-name manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, GenBioPro has received substantial investment, totaling millions of dollars, from the pro-abortion David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Furthermore, public data indicate that GenBioPro has dispersed thousands of dollars in "consulting fees" and "honoraria" over the preceding years.

Some of these payments were directed to study authors and other recipients, many of whom failed to disclose this potential conflict of interest in their published research.

3). Evita Solutions, LLC

The FDA approved a second manufacturer of a generic abortion pill, Evita Solutions, LLC, in September 2025 — a decision made despite the agency's prior commitment to conducting a safety review of the abortion pill.

Information concerning Evita Solutions, LLC is scarce, but its drug application was initially submitted in 2021.

Carole Novielli

@CaroleNovielli

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Will the abortion pill's generic be investigated by @propublica after claiming inspectors found safety of factories that produce generics questionable? GenBioPro still doesn't list the country of origin on their label - and ProPublica doesn't know either.

3:54 PM · May 14, 2026

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The abortion pill (mifepristone 200mg) was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000, in a regimen along with a second drug, misoprostol, for the “termination of pregnancy.”

Concerns Over Generic Drug Safety

"The truth is, most of our generic drug supply comes from overseas, produced in underregulated markets and in factories with far less oversight than those in the United States, and the danger of our overreliance on foreign-made medicines and Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) from India and Communist China cannot be overstated," stated Senator Rick Scott in February.

Months later, ProPublica wrote:

This is a story about a powerful government agency that’s in charge of keeping us safe withholding scary information about our medications. The stuff we put into our bodies every day. So we’re going to do what the FDA won’t: tell you where our generic medications come from and the truth about the factories that made them. 

To be clear, ProPublica's report did not indicate that it found issues with factories manufacturing abortion drugs. However, this is not cause for relief, given that the names and locations of factories that manufacture abortion drugs are often obscure and not publicly identified.

ProPublica added:

ProPublica reporters uncovered reports from the FDA’s own inspectors detailing everything from pigeons pooping onto boxes of sterilized equipment to evidence of a factory cheating on quality testing. Even though the FDA knew about these reports, it let some of those troubled factories overseas keep shipping their drugs to the U.S. — some of which might have ended up in your medicine cabinet. 

"For decades, the U.S. government has promised and we all grew up believing that if you take a generic drug, it is just as safe and effective as a brand-name drug," ProPublica investigator Debbie Cenziper said, adding:

But when I was hearing stories from inspectors who had spent months or years going from one factory to another in remote areas of China and India and other countries, and describing what they saw, I thought, How is that possible? How is that promise possible?

ProPublica reporter Jessica Lussenhop noted that while "[m]uch of these factories should be as sterile as an operating room," the reports that ProPublica reviewed indicated "that really wasn’t the case at some of these factories. Inspectors described them as being dirty and having manufacturing breakdowns."

ProPublica identified disturbing issues, including:

• Dirty water collecting in buckets around the sterile area

• Metal shavings on equipment

• Urinals dripping near the sterile factory

• Pigeons perched on wires and defecating in sterile areas. 

Lussenhop noted:

In addition to just writing down the things they observed, inspectors would also check to see if the factories were testing their drugs properly...

It turns out the FDA doesn’t regularly test generic drugs that are coming into the U.S. to make sure they are safe and effective. It just lets the companies do the tests themselves. But the inspectors found serious issues with some of these tests, too. Like in this report talking about testing records from a factory in India.

This is little comfort given the massive number of abortion drugs flooding across U.S. borders.

What Countries are Abortion Pills Manufactured in?

1). Danco: The original abortion drug maker, Danco Laboratories, was initially suspected of manufacturing abortion drugs in China.

In 2008, Hua Lian distributed contaminated leukemia drugs that paralyzed at least 200 Chinese cancer patients, according to a New York Times report. The contaminated drug problem was such a concern that even abortion corporation Planned Parenthood called on FDA officials to investigate.

However, a 2023 settlement in False Claims Act litigation against Danco, filed for not stating the country of origin on the drug's packaging, revealed the abortion drug maker was manufacturing abortion pills in Spain.

While not specifically related to the manufacturing of their drugs, Danco Laboratories has also been cited by the FDA multiple times:

In 2016, Danco was cited for:

• Adverse drug experience information has not been reported to the FDA

• Incomplete periodic safety report

In 2010, it was cited for:

• Adverse drug experience information obtained or otherwise received from any source was not promptly reviewed, including information from commercial marketing experience, post-marketing clinical investigations, post-marketing epidemiological/surveillance activities, reports in the scientific literature, and unpublished scientific papers

• Written procedures have not been developed for the surveillance, receipt, evaluation, and reporting to the FDA of post-marketing adverse drug experiences

• Not all adverse drug experiences that are both serious and unexpected have been reported to the FDA within 15 calendar days of initial receipt of the information

• An FDA Form 3500A has not been completed for each report of a domestic adverse drug experience

FDA citations from 2006 were similar.

2). GenBioPro: The generic manufacturer GenBioPro (GBP) was once suspected of importing the drug from India.

But, while it is unclear whether GBP is still importing, drug packaging under the GBP name, including a 2024 packaging label for misoprostol and a March 2023 mifepristone label located in the FDA Report, as well as the FDA label search website, fails to show the manufacturing country of origin, other than to indicate that misoprostol is a "Product of United Kingdom."

3). Evita Solutions: The newest generic pill maker, Evita Solutions, shows the drug is manufactured in India, according to Daily Med's website:

UK/Drugs/12/UA/SC/P-2009
Made in India

While Daily Med lists India as the manufacturing location, Evita's packaging does not appear to specify a manufacturing country of origin.

Ironically, a search on ProPublica's website revealed that the pro-abortion media company does not know the country of origin for the generic abortion pill made by GenBioPro, nor the drug overseen by Danco.

In October 2022, Glamour Magazine described the online abortion pill dispensary Aid Access' process as shipping drugs into the U.S. from India, writing in part at that time, "In states where abortion is illegal...A distributor in India ships the medication into the United States."

In 2023, DKT International, which distributes and sells millions of abortion pills globally and operates a U.S. affiliate called Carafem, was suspected of shipping abortion drugs into the U.S. manufactured by the Delhi-based Synokem Pharmaceuticals Ltd, which is alleged to have a “shoddy quality record,” according to Bloomberg.com. The outlet also noted that DKT International “has become one of the world’s largest sellers of abortion pills, serving women from India to Mexico.” 

In addition, Bloomberg claimed that:

While the inspection reports didn’t flag significant issues, at least 23 samples of Synokem’s drugs have failed quality tests since 2018, according to test results Bloomberg collected from six state and federal drug regulators in India... One of the tests, involving a misoprostol sample collected at a hospital pharmacy in 2019, had so little active ingredient that a government-run hospital network warned all its members to stop using any medication from the entire batch, official records show.

While Bloomberg claimed that “Synokem abortion pills haven’t been linked to any deaths or serious injuries,” they went on to note that “the company’s product failures, all detected after the drugs had been sold to pharmacies and other distributors, suggest its internal quality assurance system is not working, medical experts consulted about the data told Bloomberg.”

Ironically, DKT is also funded by the Packard Foundation.

The Bottom Line:

As the FDA conducts its safety review of the abortion pill, perhaps a full review of the facilities that manufacture these drugs would also be prudent.