Study: Abortion Drug Complications 22 Times More Common than FDA Admits

S.A. McCarthy : Apr 29, 2025
The Washington Stand

Given the results of the report, the EPPC made several recommendations for the FDA to revise its policy regarding the prescription and use of mifepristone and "reinstate the original patient safety protocols that were required when mifepristone was first approved" in 2000. At that time, prerequisites for a mifepristone prescription included three in-person physician visits, the drug could only be prescribed by a physician, could only be dispensed in a physician's office, and had to be taken in a physician's office...

[WashingtonStand.com] An explosive new study is revealing that the abortion drug is significantly more dangerous than government health agencies have previously claimed. The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) published a report Monday detailing the dangers associated with the use of the abortion drug mifepristone. The study found that, although the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) claims that less than half a percent of women experience serious complications, the actual rate of damage done by the drug is significantly higher. (Image credit: Robin Marty-Flickr-CC BY 2.0)

Touted as the "largest-known study of the abortion pill," the EPPC report examined data from an insurance database, covering 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions committed between 2017 and 2023. Here are some of the study's most important findings.

More than 1 in 10 Women Experience Complications from Mifepristone

According to the EPPC's report, 10.93% of women who used the abortion drug mifepristone experienced serious complications within 45 days as a result. Complications included sepsis (0.10% of cases), infection (1.34%), transfusion (0.15%), hemorrhage (3.31%), abortion-related hospitalization (0.66%), abortion-related emergency room visit (4.73%), ectopic pregnancy (0.35%), unspecified other abortion-specific complications (5.68%), and other life-threatening adverse events (0.22%), including cardiac and pulmonary events, thrombosis, anaphylaxis, and the necessity of surgery. In nearly 3% of instances, use of mifepristone to commit abortion was followed by surgical abortion because the drug failed.

EPPC's report noted, "Simply stated, mifepristone, as used in real-world conditions, is not 'safe and effective.'"

The FDA's Research on Mifepristone Is Inadequate

The EPPC's report finds that complications arising from mifepristone are at least 22 times more common than the 0.5% of cases touted by the FDA. The new report is, according to EPPC, "the most comprehensive study of chemical abortion safety ever conducted in the US." It relies on data collected from 28 times more mifepristone abortions than the FDA's research does and, further, is more recent and more accurate to real-world circumstances. The EPPC noted that the FDA relies "entirely on data from more than a decade ago" from "a prescreened group of generally healthy women recruited into various clinical trials conducted at different times around the world."

The cases examined by the organization "are broadly representative of the women who obtain mifepristone abortions in the US" and "receive (or fail to receive) pre- and post-abortion healthcare of the real-world quality that prevails in the America today, not the carefully controlled regimen of care that ordinarily prevails in a clinical trial."

The FDA Needs to Revise Its Standards for Mifepristone Prescription

Given the results of the report, the EPPC made several recommendations for the FDA to revise its policy regarding the prescription and use of mifepristone and "reinstate the original patient safety protocols that were required when mifepristone was first approved" in 2000. At that time, prerequisites for a mifepristone prescription included three in-person physician visits, the drug could only be prescribed by a physician, could only be dispensed in a physician's office, and had to be taken in a physician's office. There were also requirements for a follow-up physician visit and for adverse event reporting.

In 2016, under then-President Barack Obama, almost all of those safeguards were removed, with only one in-person physician visit required and the drug still being dispensed in the physician's office. In 2023, the Biden administration eliminated even those two remaining safeguards. The EPPC suggested that reinstating the original FDA guidelines from 2000 "will likely reduce the harms to women and permit better monitoring to determine whether this drug should remain on the market." Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here

S.A. McCarthyserves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.