Hawley Cites Junk Science To Ban Abortion Pill | EUROtoday

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is as soon as once more spreading misinformation in regards to the abortion capsule mifepristone, and has taken his marketing campaign a step additional by introducing laws to ban it.

The Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act, which Hawley launched on Wednesday, would bar the usage of mifepristone for abortions by withdrawing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 26-year approval of the medicine. The invoice would additionally enable ladies allegedly harmed by the drug to sue producers of mifepristone.

“We are here today to issue a call to action,” Hawley stated at a press convention asserting the invoice. “To call on the United States Congress to stand up and to protect the innocent unborn, to protect the health and safety of women whose lives are endangered by the abortion drug known as mifepristone, and we’re also here to call on Congress to stand up to the greedy and foreign corporations who are making billions of dollars in profits by endangering women’s health.”

Hawley, who has regularly attacked abortion capsule entryclaimed repeatedly that mifepristone is “inherently dangerous” and “completely unregulated.” He highlighted tales of girls being coerced or compelled by boyfriends into taking the abortion capsule. Instead of going after the lads who abused their companions, Hawley desires to ban medicine used extensively and safely by tens of millions of individuals for the reason that FDA first authorized the drug in 2000.

The regulation is unlikely to cross since Hawley will want 60 votes within the Senate, and Republicans solely have 53 seats. But influential Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has already proven assist for the invoice, tweeting on Thursday that he was “all in” on the trouble.

It is sensible that anti-abortion advocates have set their sights on the capsule: Medication abortion (the mix of mifepristone and one other drug, misoprostol) now accounts for a minimum of 63% of all abortion care for the reason that Supreme Court repealed Roe v. Wade. In 2024, 1 in 4 abortions within the U.S. have been offered by telehealth.

“The Dobbs opinion is basically a dead letter so long as these abortion drugs can be mailed into every state,” Hawley stated through the press convention.

Yet once moreHawley pointed to a junk science report revealed final yr by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative assume tank and advisory board member of Project 2025. The report claims it’s the “largest-known study of the abortion pill” and that almost 11% of girls “experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.”

But the report shouldn’t be peer-reviewed, and knowledge scientists have repeatedly voiced critical issues about its validity. The EPPC report flies within the face of a long time of high-quality analysis and a whole bunch of research on mifepristone.

“The science is settled: mifepristone is safe and effective,” Blair Darney, vp for home analysis on the Guttmacher Institute, stated in an announcement. “Decades of rigorous research from the U.S. and around the world has consistently demonstrated that serious adverse events occur in less than 1% of all medication abortions, a far cry from the one in ten statistic that anti-abortion policymakers have been citing in yet another baseless attempt to restrict access to this critical medication.”

This is simply the latest assault from Hawley. Last yr, he launched a regulation to ban the mailing of abortion drugs and pushed the FDA to assessment the security of mifepristone, citing the EPPC’s junk science report.

This comes throughout a time when abortion opponents are fracturing away from President Donald Trump. The administration is reportedly slow-walking the FDA’s assessment of mifepristone till after the 2026 midterm elections — enfuriating far-right anti-abortion advocates who’ve known as for the pinnacle of the FDA to step down. Abortion opponents are additionally indignant with Trump after the administration moved final week to dismiss a federal lawsuit in opposition to the abortion capsule.