National Right to Life Applauds

FDA As It Moves to Assess the Safety of Mifepristone

WASHINGTON — National Right to Life (NRLC) applauds Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Dr. Marty Makary, Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, for an upcoming safety review of mifepristone, a drug that has caused serious complications and posed risks to women for too long. 

In a letter sent earlier this year, NRLC urged FDA Commissioner Makary to take decisive action to protect women and unborn children from dangerous chemical abortions. This letter emphasized that the FDA’s loosened rules have caused critical safety issues.

“For years, the abortion industry has downplayed the dangers of mifepristone, ignoring the thousands of women who have suffered serious complications and the children whose lives are ended by this drug,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Women are being told these pills are as safe as Tylenol—nothing could be further from the truth. This is a reckless experiment on women’s bodies and their unborn children.”

Tobias continued, “Each abortion takes the life of a preborn child and places her mother at risk. Women aborting at home are also more likely to be traumatized when they realize that they aborted a living child and not just ‘tissue’ or ‘products of conception’ as the abortion industry claims.”

According to recent data, over a period of more than a decade, the FDA received thousands of reports of serious side effects, including severe blood loss requiring emergency transfusions. A review launched by the Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Commissioner Makary is now underway to determine whether the existing regulatory framework for mifepristone is adequate.

“Tragically, we know of at least 36 women who have died after taking abortion pills,” said Tobias. “How many more have been irreparably harmed or traumatized by an abortion?”

MISSED, MISCLASSIFIED, AND MINIMIZED: Why Abortion Pill Complications Are Underreported is National Right to Life’s most recent report. It covers why stories of women suffering from serious complications following the use of abortion pills aren't known and haven't been more widely publicized.