Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) introduced a law on Tuesday to restrict the abortion pill mifepristone, citing an anti-abortion junk science report that has been making the rounds in conservative media.
The “Restoring Safeguard for Dangerous Abortion Drugs Act” aims to restrict mifepristone by reinstating 2011 Food and Drug Administration rules around the medication. Those rules, loosened by the Biden and Obama administrations, would limit who can prescribe mifepristone and require in-person visits for abortion pills — effectively banning telemedicine for abortion, which now accounts for 20% of all abortions in the U.S. It would also mandate in-person follow-up visits and further limit how far into pregnancy mifepristone can be prescribed.
The bill also seeks to allow women to sue telemedicine providers who mail abortion pills and ban foreign companies from importing the medication into the country. The latter element would target international groups like Aid Access, which mail abortion pills from overseas and have been vital to abortion access since Roe v. Wade fell.
“I’m introducing the Restoring Safeguards for Dangerous Abortion Drugs Act after a bombshell study revealed the truth about mifepristone: it’s dangerous,” Hawley said in a press release. “The data shows 1 in 10 women who take mifepristone experience adverse health effects, like going to the ER or suffering from sepsis. The FDA needs to act to protect women now.”
It’s unlikely the bill will pass, given Hawley needs seven Democrats to vote in favor.
The study Hawley is referring to is a report published last month by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advisory board member of Project 2025. The report claims it’s the “largest-known study of the abortion pill” and that nearly 11% of women “experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.”
But data scientists voiced serious concerns about the validity of the report, pointing out that it’s not peer-reviewed and the report’s recommendations do not line up with the data they allegedly analyzed.
“Even apart from all the red flags with the data and supposed analysis, the fact where they land in the recommendations — that has nothing to do with the research itself — indicates this was driven more by ideology than by scientific rigor,” Rachel Jones, a principal research scientist at the Guttmacher Institute, told HuffPost last month.
Bernadette Breslin, press secretary for Hawley, referred HuffPost to Hawley’s public statements on mifepristone but did not respond when asked the senator’s thoughts on the validity of the EPPC report.
A spokesperson for EPPC told HuffPost last month that the report was not peer-reviewed because “the extensive pro-abortion bias in the peer-review process” creates “no opportunities to publish peer-reviewed analysis that offer major substantive critiques of the abortion pill or abortion.”
Hawley’s bill comes a week after he sent a letter to FDA Commissioner Martin Makary, urging the agency to restrict mifepristone in light of the EPPC report. The senator from Missouri also published an op-ed on The Federalist, a conservative media outlet, amplifying the report’s findings and again calling for Makary to take action.