For Once, RFK Jr. Had Nothing to Say About the Abortion Pill

There’s a rumor rumbling that the men’s toilets in the House chamber is overflowing so badly that lawmakers had to cancel votes for the rest of the day. Gross. Still, no amount of crap compares to the bullshit RFK Jr. spewed at his House Oversight hearing.

On Thursday, Kennedy testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, playing up his agency’s accomplishments on a range of issues. It marked the first of seven hearings for Kennedy, who’s expected to defend his roughly $16 billion 2027 budget for Health and Human Services and talk up the HHS’ priorities. For all five hours—and counting!—he was asked about everything from drug price negotiations to the new dietary guidelines, and did his best not to answer any questions about why he hates vaccines. 

He also denied ever saying that Black children taking antidepressants or ADHD medication should be “re-parented”; dodged Rep. Steven Horsford’s (D-Nev.) questions about rollbacks to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by telling him to “calm down”; and skirted criticism of his recent MAHA campaign with Kid Rock: “You suspended this pro-vaccine messaging campaign, but somehow you’re spending taxpayer dollars to drink milk shirtless in a hot tub with Kid Rock,” Rep. Linda T. Sánchez (D-Calif.) said. “And somehow you think that’s a better public health message than informing the public about the importance of vaccines!”

Things, however, came to a real awkward standstill when anti-abortion lawmaker Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) asked Kennedy about the abortion pill, mifepristone. “How can the department appropriately address the risk of chemical abortion drugs to the health and safety of women without the reporting of serious adverse events,” he asked, deploying the GOP’s favorite boogeyword, “chemical abortion,” which is not a thing. 

Aderholt also, of course, cited the bogus far-right study that misinterpreted data to claim mifepristone is more dangerous than FDA findings indicate—a study that’s been ceaselessly and annoyingly amplified by anti-abortion Slenderman, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.). 

First, here’s your regular reminder that mifepristone is safe, safer than Viagra and Tylenol, and that the multiple FDA studies over the past decade that deemed it so were based on actual science, which was confirmed by a study explicitly saying the agency’s track record on regulating mifepristone has never been politically motivated. Earlier this month, the medical journal JAMA also affirmed that the medication could safely be made available over the counter, noting there’s no reason it shouldn’t be. 

But! Thanks to Hawley and his dumbass study, Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary agreed in September to launch a re-review of the pill. However, amid an increasingly volatile midterm landscape for the GOP—and the fact that most voters continue to support abortion rights—Makary has reportedly been delaying the review until after November.

Along those same lines, the administration’s been asking states trying to sue the FDA over the abortion pill on their own to drop their lawsuits–specifically, Louisiana and Missouri. 

Kennedy leaned on that litigation to avoid answering anything about the abortion pill. “I regret that I can’t talk about that issue because, as you know, it’s under litigation in Louisiana, and I’ve been advised by the Office of General Counsel to not discuss it.” Interesting. He then added, again, “They asked me not to discuss it because anything I say may have implications on litigation.”

Instead, Aderholt used his time to subtly go after shield laws, which allow doctors to prescribe the abortion pill to patients in abortion-banned states without fear of prosecution. “I do wanna point that [the] modifications issued by the FDA under the previous administration created a mail-in order abortion scheme that completely removed the in-person dispensing requirement,” Aderholt said. Yeah, dude—the FDA removed it (in 2023) because the abortion pill is safe, effective, and gives women control over their own bodies. None of which can be said about the GOP.

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