Mifepristone Is SAFE, the GOP Is NOT

During RFK Jr.'s three-hour Senate hearing, 2 Republicans brought up the bogus far-right "study" claiming mifepristone isn't safe, and I'm losing my mind.

By Lauren Tousignant | September 4, 2025 | 6:05pm

Photos: Getty Images Abortion Politics

If I had a penny for every time in the last four months a GOP politician has pushed that bogus far-right “study” claiming mifepristone isn’t safe, I’d have enough money to fund my own non-peer-reviewed study that claims every GOP member is just a stack of dead blobfish flopping around inside a skinsuit.

On Wednesday, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. went before the Senate Finance Committee to yell at Democratic senators, rail against the covid vaccine and the CDC, and claim he had no idea that Epstein survivors held a press conference on Wednesday. When he wasn’t screaming about how all public health data is corrupt and wrong, he was death-rattling into his microphone. But amid the three-hour-long contentious back-and-forth, there were three mentions of mifepristone—the first of two pills taken in a medication abortion.

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Republicans are still pissed that the FDA approved telemedicine prescriptions of the drug in April 2021, following the height of the covid pandemic, and also that, in 2016, the agency approved the pill for use for up to 10 weeks. In 2023, mifepristone comprised nearly two-thirds of all abortions, which the GOP is also obviously pissed about. Project 2025 specifically says that one of its goals is to reverse the FDA’s approval of the pill. So they sure are lucky this stupid study came out of nowhere, just a couple of months after Trump re-entered the White House.

The first mention during Wednesday’s hearing came from Sen. James Lankford (R-Ok.), who, I’m sorry, but looks like a praying mantis. He stated there are “all kinds of issues that are happening” with the pill and asked if there was any timing on the FDA’s review. In June, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary promised a review after Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)—who also kind of looks like a praying mantis—spent two months amplifying the fake “study” from the far-right Ethics & Public Policy Center, a Project 2025 partner whose president is against marriage equality and IVF.

“I can’t give you the exact timing,” Kennedy told Lankford . “We’re getting data in all the time, new data, that we’re reviewing. And we know that during the Biden administration, they actually twisted the data to bury one of the safety signals, a very high safety signal, around 11%”

The percentage is pulled directly from the EPPC’s “study,” which claims that 11% of women experienced an “adverse” side effect after taking mifepristone, a considerably higher percentage than the FDA’s current warning of less than 0.5%. Except it’s the study that twisted the data; they widened the category of “mifepristone abortions,” likely including patients who were taking the pill for other reasons, like miscarriage management.

“We’re producing gold-standard science on that,” Kennedy concluded to Lankford. Sure, Jan.

Next was Sen. Steve Daines of Montana (R), who took what felt like two hours to say seven sentences. He began by summarizing the study, then saying: “For years we’ve heard the misleading and frankly, very harmful, lie that’s being sold to women that this drug is, and I quote, safe as Tylenol.” Actually, it’s not as safe as Tylenol; mifepristone is considered safer than Tylenol. And also Viagra—but Daines looks like the kind of guy who calls 911 when he has an erection, so I wouldn’t expect him to know about that.

He then claimed two women died in 2024 from taking abortion pills, but this is wrong. Daines seemed to be referencing Georgia women Amber Thurman and Candi Miller, whose deaths were caused by delayed care due to the state’s extreme abortion ban. Thurman needed a simple abortion procedure, known as a D&C, following complications from abortion pills, but doctors waited more than 20 hours to treat her out of fear of fines, prison time, or losing their license. Miller had a host of underlying conditions, and her doctors told her that her pregnancy “was going to be more painful and her body may not be able to withstand it.” But it wasn’t life-threatening enough under the state’s ban to allow an abortion, so she took the pills. She suffered complications and also would have needed a simple D&C, but refused to go to the hospital out of fear of the ban. The state’s maternal mortality committee determined her death was caused by the “lethal combination” of painkillers she took. Funny, I don’t hear any Republicans demanding that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp be reviewed for safety.

So Daines doesn’t know what the hell he’s talking about. But he sucked up to Kennedy and Makary for a few more moments before finally getting to his fucking question: “My question is, could you provide any update on the status and the scope of that review, and whether the FDA intends to replicate studies like the one that I referenced?”

Kennedy said he talked to Makary “yesterday” about it, but admitted he has no idea what they’re doing, but also that “those studies are progressing and they’re ongoing.” Thank God he’s on top of things.

After the hearing, Daines tweeted a clip of himself, writing, “The science is clear: the abortion pill is not safe for women.” Literally, all Daines did was repeat a ChatGPT summarization of EPPC’s sludge to which Kennedy replied, Yeah, idk. Crystal-clear science, for sure.

Finally, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) closed out the hearing, mercifully defending the pill and questioning why anyone was even questioning it. He did not give the middle finger to Lankford and Daines, but that is what I envisioned him doing when the cameras weren’t on him.

“[Mifepristone] has now served more than 7.5 million women, and of course, it is used for reproductive health and for medication abortion. It has been documented again and again as safe,” he said to Kennedy. “I’m getting reports that you’ve said you’re going to conduct a complete review of mifepristone’s safety, and what we’re hearing is, it’s not based on new clinical trials or data from the scientific community…so what I’d like is for you to say that you’ll commit your best scientists, without bias, will be permitted to conduct this entirely unnecessary safety review. I don’t see any evidence for it.”

“You have my commitment,” Kennedy replied. “It’ll be good science and good scientists.” Sick, dude! Much like the health of our entire country under your worm-eaten brain.

At least 100 studies have confirmed that mifepristone is safe, so yes, the science is clear: the abortion pill is safe, the GOP is not.

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