(Oregon Right to Life) — Pressure from leaders in the pro-life movement mounted this week in relation to the FDA’s safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone. The heightened attention follows a report suggesting that FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary told officials to delay the review until after the 2026 midterm elections. Makary has denied the allegations.
On Monday, Bloomberg News reported that Dr. Makary had told FDA officials to stall their review of the abortion pill until after the 2026 midterm elections, citing individuals familiar with the matter. The report raised the ire of pro-life advocates and organizations.
In a strong statement on Tuesday, Susan B. Anthony (SBA) Pro-Life America president Majorie Dannenfelser blasted the reported decision to delay the review, saying “[e]nough is enough.”
“The FDA is doing nothing while every single day abortion drugs take the lives of children, put women and girls at serious risk, empower abusers and trample state pro-life laws,” Dannenfelser said. “Commissioner Makary is severely undermining President Trump and Vice President Vance’s pro-life credentials and their position that states should have the right to enact and enforce pro-life protections.”
Dannenfelser argued that Dr. Makary “should be fired immediately, saying “[t]he FDA needs a new commissioner who will immediately reinstate in-person dispensing as it existed under President Trump’s first term and immediately conduct a comprehensive study.”
“If Dr Makary will not act as head of the FDA to protect children and mothers he should be fired,” Live Action president Lila Rose similarly wrote in a post on X. “Under his watch abortion pills kill preborn children and endanger women and the study he promised is nowhere to be found. End mail order abortion. Ban the abortion pill now!”
Major pro-life organizations, including SBA, Live Action, and National Right to Life, have been urging the Trump administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for months to conduct and release a review of mifepristone after new data emerged suggesting that the drug’s severe adverse reaction rate was far higher than the percentage listed on the drug’s label.
The first drug in the abortion pill regimen, mifepristone blocks the action of the growth hormone progesterone, causing the growing human embryo to die of starvation. In 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA permitted mifepristone to be prescribed online and distributed via mail. Local pharmacies were also authorized to dispense the drugs, and in January 2023, that permission was extended to retail pharmacies like Walgreens and CVS. Those expansions are in addition to the 2016 changes whereby the FDA implemented a policy widening the timeframe in which mifepristone could be prescribed during pregnancy and removed the requirement to report complications that do not result in death. In April, the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) released a bombshell study calculating the severe complication rate associated with the drug to be twenty-two times the one currently listed on its official FDA label, causing serious concerns for the safety of women who consume the drug and renewing calls for a restoration of regulations.
In June, Dr. Makary pledged that he would carry out “a review of mifepristone” alongside “the professional career scientists at the Agency who review this data.”
READ: FDA Will Conduct Investigation into Abortion Pill Following Blockbuster Study on Risks
Makary and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have subsequently responded to inquiries by lawmakers and others by noting that the review was underway, though they did not provide specifics concerning the anticipated release of the FDA’s conclusions. In October, the FDA rattled pro-life advocates by approving a generic version of the abortion pill. Some questioned Kennedy’s explanation that “federal law requires approval when an application proves the generic is identical to the brand-name drug.”
Tensions between the FDA and pro-life organizations heightened further following the Bloomberg report on Monday. For their part, the HHS and Makary have denied the report’s allegations.
HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon told Bloomberg that “assertions that the FDA is slow-walking this review for political purposes are baseless.”
“The FDA’s comprehensive scientific reviews take the time necessary to get the science right and that’s what Dr. Makary is ensuring,” Nixon said.
On Tuesday, Dr. Makary gave an exclusive interview to The Daily Signal denouncing the “rumors” and promising that the FDA would “do an ongoing review” while “engaging in a robust study that can serve to validate or not validate other numbers that have been put out there in the literature.”
“These are all routine steps in robust data analysis,” he said. “Studies are often repeated, done by multiple reviewers or statisticians. So, we’re going to do it the right way. And look, I know there are a lot of voices in this space, but I’m committed to doing this the right way.” While he said he’s not able to predict the review’s “results or the timeframe,” Dr. Makary reconfirmed that the mifepristone review is actively underway.
“There’s a lot of rumors that are circulating out there,” Makary told The Daily Signal. “We live in a very partisan time, and so you’re going to see the echo chambers of social media sort of magnify rumors, things that are just not true. There has been an ongoing review of mifepristone.”
Deputy White House Press Secretary Kush Desai said the “White House maintains the utmost confidence in Commissioner Makary, whose leadership at the FDA has delivered and continues to deliver one landmark victory for the American people after another, from cracking down on artificial ingredients in our food supply to conducting the first safety review of baby formula in decades.”
READ: ‘Serious Risks to Women’: Over 20 Attorneys General Call for Regulation of Abortion Pill
As Americans wait for updates concerning the FDA’s review of mifepristone, reports highlighted by pro-life organizations have emphasized the increased risks of coercion, abuse, and serious health effects to women connected to the current widespread availability of the abortion drug.
In the past several years alone, numerous men have been hit with criminal charges after spiking their wives’ or girlfriends’ drinks with abortion drugs. Last year, for example, Ohio surgeon Dr. Hassan-James Abbas allegedly forced his pregnant girlfriend to consume mifepristone while she was asleep. Abbas now faces six felony charges. A 2023 peer-reviewed study found that 70% of abortions are “coerced, unwanted or inconsistent with women’s preferences.”
A recent national poll found that 69% of respondents across the political spectrum agreed that “it makes sense for the FDA to bring back” the requirement for in-person doctors’ visits removed under the Biden administration.
