A new study finds that nearly 11 percent of women who had chemical abortions suffered a serious adverse event.

This morning, the Ethics and Public Policy Center released the results of a new study on the health risks of chemical abortions. Obtaining data from a private health insurance registry, they were able to analyze health outcomes from over 800,000 women who obtained chemical abortions between 2017 and 2023. They found that over 4 percent of these women visited an emergency room and that nearly 11 percent suffered a serious adverse event. These risks are far greater than the health risks reported by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

This study is important for several reasons. First, it considers relatively recent data on the health outcomes of women who obtained chemical abortions. Most of the previous research on the safety of chemical abortions analyzed older data. Prior to 2016, women obtaining chemical abortions had to make multiple in-person visits to a medical professional. Additionally, only pregnant women at less than seven weeks’ gestation could obtain chemical abortions.

However, in 2016 the Obama administration FDA allowed women up to ten weeks’ pregnant to obtain chemical abortions and reduced the number of in-person visits to a medical professional from three to one. Then in July 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, a federal district court suspended the requirement that mifepristone be distributed in person. That allowed women to obtain chemical abortion drugs through the mail without an in-person medical exam. The Biden administration continued this unwise policy after the conclusion of the Covid-19 pandemic.

These policy changes clearly increased the health risks involved with chemical abortions. However, there was scant hard data to demonstrate this. Making matters worse, in 2016 the FDA ceased mandating the reporting of complications related to chemical abortions — with the exception of deaths. Now these health risks can be documented.

Finally, it is important that the data came from a private health insurance registry. Supporters of legal abortion have downplayed previous research that analyzed Medicaid recipients who had obtained chemical abortions. They often claimed that poor public health outcomes were due to the fact that women on Medicaid are disproportionately low-income. They also argued that women on Medicaid are more likely than other women to seek health care at emergency rooms. They cannot make those arguments here.

Protecting women and preborn children from chemical abortion drugs has become an important priority for the pro-life movement. After a fairly consistent 37-year decline, the U.S. abortion rate started to increase in 2017, shortly after the Obama administration FDA loosened regulations on chemical abortion drugs. Furthermore, many women in states with strong pro-life laws circumvent these laws by obtaining chemical abortion drugs through the mail. Hopefully, this study will give Trump FDA appointees the data they need to place limits on chemical abortion drugs and even to reconsider FDA approval of mifepristone.