On April 28, two reports that analyzed the largest known data set related to complications of mifepristone were published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Foundation for the Restoration of America. The data set was derived from commercially available insurance claims data representing all major payers in the US and included 865,727 drug-induced abortions between 2017 and 2023. The papers find that 10.93 percent of women who took mifepristone suffered serious adverse events such as hemorrhage, infection, sepsis, and more. This rate of serious complications is more than 20 times higher than what the FDA routinely reports.
Based on abortion statistics reported by the Guttmacher Institute, a 10.93 percent complication rate means that nearly 71,000 women likely experienced serious adverse events in 2023. These findings align with what many of our members have seen in their practice. With drug-induced abortion now accounting for at least 63 percent of all abortions – and, as of 2024, mail-order abortion constituting 14 percent of all abortions – physicians are seeing more patients presenting to the emergency department or admitted to the hospital due to complications such as incomplete abortion.
AAPLOG’s commentary on these reports has been featured in several news outlets, including Fox News, the New York Post, Newsmax (watch these two clips of Dr. Francis live in studio), the Washington Times, the Daily Wire, Town Hall, the Catholic News Agency, and the Family Research Council’s Washington Watch.
If you haven’t kept up with AAPLOG’s response to this data on social media, you can quickly catch up by:
- Reading this Twitter thread for a quick summary of the reports and their implications
- Watching AAPLOG CEO Dr. Christina Francis’s 1-minute video on this topic
- Watching AAPLOG member Dr. Brent Boles’ thoughts on these reportsese reports
- Reading this Twitter post calling on ACOG to reprioritize women’s safety in their messaging on abortion drugs
In 2024, AAPLOG and several organizational and individual plaintiffs argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that the FDA must restore essential safeguards on the abortion drug, opening the door for the proliferation of dangerous mail-order abortions. Though the Court’s ruling allowed the FDA’s reckless actions to continue, and the U.S. Department of Justice asked a lower federal court to dismiss several pro-life states’ challenge of these same actions, AAPLOG will continue to advocate for the safety of our pregnant and preborn patients.
We hope that this new data set adds further evidence for the necessity of ending the deregulation of abortion drugs.
It is important to raise awareness of this new data as it suggests that the pro-abortion narrative about mifepristone’s safety does not reflect reality. If you’re interested in contacting your state health authorities to ask them to place appropriate regulations on this drug to protect the health of pregnant women and their preborn babies, contact AAPLOG’s Director of Advocacy and Policy, Rebecca Weaver, at director@aaplogaction.org.
Sign this petition to tell the FDA to put women’s health first and restore essential safeguards on mifepristone.
