Senate Democrats snubbed women all across the country on Wednesday when they downplayed the physical dangers and abuse risks associated with abortion pills in favor of promoting abortion for all via mail-order mifepristone.
Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy and his GOP colleagues utilized the hearing titled Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs as yet another opportunity to spur on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s professed mifepristone review.
Cassidy told The Daily Signal ahead of the hearing that he believes the FDA should “immediately” reinstate safeguards such as in-person doctor visits for abortion pill dispensing. His call joins a chorus of demands from both the Senate and the House Republicans and pro-life organizations to the FDA to roll back Biden-era expansions that make it easier for people to obtain mifepristone via mail or a drug store pharmacy without medical oversight.
Democrats, on the other hand, tried to spin the proceedings to support their abortion activism and goals — in the face of mounds of data and anecdotes. Sen. Tammy Baldwin painted the hearing as a stepping stone to “a Republican effort for national abortion ban by any means necessary.” Sen. Maggie Hassan claimed the GOP’s expressed desire to protect women from the harms associated with abortion pills was “gaslighting at the highest level” and shrugged off concerns about abortion pill abuse with claims that coercion and assault on pregnant women are “a longstanding part of human history.” Sen. Angela Alsobrooks scolded Republicans for “lecturing about the safety of women,” claiming that “these people don’t care about humans.”
When Sen. Patty Murray took over Sen. Roger Marshall’s time, she referred to Republicans as “anti-choice extremists” and called questions about whether popular abortion pills are poisoning Americans’ tap water “crazy.” She also implied that the FDA’s recent decision to approve a generic version of the pill affirmed its “safety.”
Despite testimony, studies, and other confirmation showing mail-order mifepristone has directly harmed women and babies, Democrats, led by Ranking Member Bernie Sanders, repeatedly insisted that abortion pills are “safe and effective” and implied that the science on mifepristone is settled.
The blue politicians’ handpicked witness, Dr. Nisha Verma, an obstetrician-gynecologist and fellow at pro-abortion group Physicians for Reproductive Health, also testified. She claimed that chemical abortion “through telehealth is equally safe and effective” as abortion pills prescribed after a doctor does an in-person evaluation and pregnancy dating ultrasound.
At two points in the hearing, Verma refused to answer questions about whether men can get pregnant.
“This is not a hypothetical question,” Sen. Josh Hawley pressed. “This is not theoretical. It affects real people in their real lives, and you’re here as an expert, called by the other side as an expert, and you’ve been telling us that you, that you follow — right, you’re a doctor — and you follow the science and the evidence. So I just want to know based on the science: Can men get pregnant?”
When she wasn’t evading questions about biological sex, Verma repeatedly blamed “abortion bans and restrictions” for the consequences of mifepristone, including, apparently, forced abortions.
The evidence suggests otherwise. One study from the Charlotte Lozier Institute’s director of life sciences, Dr. Cameron Louttit, found that assertions that mifepristone is safer than some over-the-counter medications (such as acetaminophen) are “wholly unfounded, offering deficient and disingenuous representations of safety for any of the drugs compared.”
“Mifepristone is not safer than Tylenol and should not be made available over the counter,” Dr. Monique Chireau Wubbenhorst, one of the witnesses who is an obstetrician-gynecologist, added during her testimony. “Tylenol is an over-the-counter medication. It does not have a black box warning. Most problems with Tylenol are associated with accidental or deliberate overdose. Mifepristone side effects are associated with routine prescribed use.”
Another analysis, published in April 2025, determined that more than one in 10 women who take mifepristone suffer a serious adverse event such as hemorrhage and infection. That risk of complication, the review concluded, is at least 22 times higher than what the FDA and mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories boast.
New polling even shows that Americans across all parties want the FDA to protect women from the drug responsible for more than half of U.S. abortions. The desire for action climbs amid recent abortion pill poisoning reports and lawsuits indicating that abusers and other bad actors use relaxed mail-order abortion drug provisions to force mifepristone on pregnant women.
Approximately 70 percent of abortions are believed to be unwanted, coerced, or inconsistent with the mother’s values and desires. Yet Democrats continue to endorse the illegal trafficking of abortion drugs from states with shield laws that seek to absolve dispensers of legal recourse or jail time.
“Activists have created and organized a dangerous scheme of drug dealing protected by politicians. These are not medical standards. There are no medical standards in any state that sanction such irresponsible actions by a medical professional. And political preferences do not justify placing women at such medical risk. These are not medical professionals and this is not healthcare,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, another witness, said.
Not only did Murrill identify mifepristone as a dangerous drug that has harmed women in her state, but she also called out Democrats’ radical abortion pill expansions as schemes “to circumvent Dobbs.”
Until the FDA reimposes the mifepristone safeguards wrecked by Biden, Murrill said, “Louisiana’s efforts to protect mothers and their unborn children and to hold out-of-state abortion pill traffickers accountable for the harm they inflict will be all but futile.”
In addition to restoring the abortion pill risk evaluation and mitigation strategies (REMS) the Biden administration ditched, Wubbenhorst also suggested lawmakers prioritize the “enforcement of existing regulations such as the Comstock Act.”
Jordan Boyd is an award-winning staff writer at The Federalist and producer of “The Federalist Radio Hour.” Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on X @jordanboydtx.
