Inventor of the abortion pill has died at age 98

Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the French scientist who invented the abortion pill, died on Friday at his home in Paris. He was 98 years old.

Baulieu was instrumental in developing the drug RU-486 — mifepristone — the first drug of the two-drug abortion pill regimen, which is responsible for the deaths of millions of innocent preborn children around the world. Since its approval under the Clinton administration in 2000, approximately 7.5 million women have used the abortion pill to end their babies’ lives  in the U.S. alone, and, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, the abortion pill accounted for 63% of all U.S abortions in 2023.

False freedom for women

Baulieu’s wife, Simone Harari Baulieu, said upon her husband’s death, “His research was guided by his commitment to progress through science, his dedication to women’s freedom and his desire to enable everyone to live better and longer lives.”

French President Emmanuel Macron posted praise for Baulieu on X following news of his death. “Few French people have changed the world to such an extent,” he said. “Resistance fighter, research genius, defender of contraception, inventor of the abortion pill, Étienne-Emile Baulieu was a progressive spirit who enabled women to achieve their freedom. We have lost a courageous scout.”

Aurore Bergé, France’s gender equality minister, also posted on X, saying, “Étienne-Emile Baulieu was guided throughout his life by one requirement: that of human dignity…. who freed millions of women from unwanted pregnancies with the abortion pill” (emphases added).

The common theme in statements regarding his death is that Baulieu’s work was committed to women’s “freedom” and “human dignity.”

However, his legacy is much different from the one abortion enthusiasts are describing. Despite his past as part of the French resistance against the Nazi occupation at the age of 15, his deadly abortion pill has ties to the same company that manufactured cyanide gas for Nazi death camps.

As reported by Live Action research fellow Carole Novielli, according to the New York Times, his research for RU-486 began in conjunction with Groupe Roussel Uclaf, the French drug company for which he was a consultant.

“The idea was to find a substance that would prevent the uterus from receiving progesterone and thus prevent it from holding onto the fertilized egg,” they wrote. This was accomplished in 1980, when Roussel-Uclaf developed RU-486. According to a report by the New York Times, Roussel-Uclaf’s parent company — Hoechst A.G. of Germany — “was one of three corporations that emerged from the breakup of I.G. Farben, the German chemical company that manufactured the cyanide gas, Zyklon B, for Nazi death camps…” In other words, the company that produced the gas used in the Nazi death camps is the same company that produced the abortion pill.

In addition, Baulieu was reportedly inspired by the work of Gregory Pincus, co-inventor of the birth control pill, who, according to the Harvard Crimson, targeted mentally ill women, poor women, and women in Puerto Rico to carry out brutal experiments often without their consent.

The abortion pill was never meant to be mail-order

Today, the abortion pill is the most common abortion procedure in the U.S., and it is shipped through the mail to women who have not had so much as a doctor’s examination or pregnancy dating. Baulieu said in a 2013 book that using the abortion pill in this manner would prove dangerous.

“About 5 in 1000 pregnancies (0.5%) are ectopic… If ectopic pregnancy is not detected, the woman goes through a disaster, regardless of whether or not she uses RU-486 [the abortion pill], because it will rupture with heavy internal hemorrhaging…” he said. “This is why I insist that a woman should be medically examined if she wants an abortion of any kind, surgical or medical. Ectopic pregnancy presents a great risk.”

And while the media and abortion proponents tout the abortion pill as safe for women, research continually shows it is not. A new, first-of-its-kind study recently found that serious adverse events from mifepristone occur at a rate approximately 22 times higher than the rate reported on the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) label for the drug.

The report, “The Abortion Pill Harms Women,” published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), states that nearly 11% of women (10.93%) experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other serious or life-threatening adverse events following a mifepristone abortion — meaning one in ten women experience at least one serious complication from taking mifepristone within 45 days.

In addition to the physical risks, women who have taken the abortion pill have come forward with stories of trauma at having seen their babies’ bodies during excruciatingly painful at-home DIY abortions.

The bottom line

Baulieu’s abortion pill legacy is not one of freedom or dignity for women. Rather, it stripped women of both, convincing them that sexual freedom and the deaths of their preborn children are the foundations of equality, and allowing men who would use them for sexual pleasure to abandon them to horrific and traumatizing abortions behind closed doors without even the guidance of a doctor.

Correction, 6/3/25: This article previously contained an old statistic which has been replaced with the newest information available.