Rfk Jr Hints Access To Key Abortion Drug Could Be Cut Back

The US wellness caput Robert F Kennedy Jr has suggested that Biden-era regulations expanding entree to abortion pills could beryllium rolled backmost because nan Biden management had “twisted nan data” down nan pills.

Kennedy made nan remark much than an hr into a tense interrogation by members of nan US Senate judiciary committee complete his chaotic tenure astatine nan wellness department, which has been marked by thousands of layoffs and nan promotion of leaders pinch small inheritance successful nationalist wellness and medicine.

Kennedy did not backmost up nan accusation, which runs antagonistic to much than 3 decades of research. More than 100 studies, conducted crossed dozens of countries, person recovered that mifepristone and misoprostol, nan abortion pills typically utilized successful nan United States, are a safe and effective way to extremity a pregnancy.

The remark came when James Lankford, a Republican legislator from Oklahoma, asked Kennedy whether nan Trump administration intended to reverse nan Biden-era changes to entree to mifepristone. In 2016 and 2021, nan FDA rewrote its regulations of nan supplier to let healthcare providers different than doctors to prescribe it and to make it easier for patients to person mifepristone done telemedicine.

“You’d said location would beryllium a reappraisal connected that, conscionable to beryllium capable to look astatine it, make judge we’re pursuing each information protocols,” Lankford said. “Do you cognize a timing connected that review?”

“I can’t springiness you an nonstop timing,” Kennedy said, adding that he talked to FDA commissioner Marty Makary astir nan issue.

“We’re getting information successful each nan time. New information that we’re reviewing. And we cognize that during nan Biden administration, they really twisted nan information to hide 1 of nan information signals, a very precocious information signal, astir 11%,” Kennedy said. “We’re gonna make judge that doesn’t hap immoderate more.”

Kennedy appeared to beryllium referring to an study published successful an April insubstantial by nan Ethics and Public Policy Center, a rightwing thinktank, which claimed almost 11% of women acquisition sepsis, hemorrhaging aliases different superior complications wrong 45 days of taking mifepristone. Experts person recovered aggregate flaws successful nan analysis, which was not peer-reviewed nor published successful a aesculapian journal. For example, it counts ectopic pregnancies – wherein an embryo implants location extracurricular of nan uterine lining – arsenic a superior complication, but mifepristone neither causes nor worsens ectopic pregnancies.

Nevertheless, anti-abortion groups person utilized that study arsenic fodder to target abortion pills, which person go a major avenue of abortion access successful nan 3 years since nan US ultimate tribunal overturned Roe v Wade.

Other parts of Kennedy’s grounds were besides marred by inaccuracies. Later successful nan hearing, Kennedy claimed: “For nan first clip successful 20 years today, we learned that babe mortality has accrued successful our country. It’s not because I came successful here. It’s because of what happened successful nan Biden management – that we will end.”

Infant mortality successful nan US spiked for nan first clip successful 2022, not 2025, according to nan Commonwealth Fund. At slightest portion of that spike is apt owed to nan emergence of abortion bans, particularly successful Texas, which outlawed virtually each abortions successful 2021.

Numerous studies person linked abortion bans – which are now in effect successful much than a twelve states and person been championed by Republicans – to rising babe deaths, arsenic they tin require women carrying nonviable gestation to springiness commencement to infants who do not survive.