Trump Administration Officially Going After the Abortion Pill

If Trump’s re-election didn't motivate you to stockpile abortion pills, here’s your chance.

By Danielle Han | September 25, 2025 | 2:52pm

Photo: Getty Images Abortion Politics

Trump Administration Officially Going After the Abortion Pill

On Sunday, it will have been 25 years since mifepristone hit the market, a groundbreaking decision that came about because, like most drugs you’d want approved by government standards, the abortion pill was deemed safe and effective. Now, thanks to a gaggle of our nation’s top health chiefs, a team of anti-abortion imbeciles, and a junk study looking to unravel the last half-century of progress, the abortion pill could soon be banned.

On Friday, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and Secretary of HHS Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote a letter confirming they will re-review the medication in response to a letter from 22 Republican AGs who quietly asked the FDA to re-review the pill in July. The FDA’s decision comes after a months-long push from Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), who’s been busy amplifying a bogus study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a far-right “think tank.” In April, Hawley wrote to Makary, asking him to review the medication; that same month, he introduced a bill to restrict access to the pill (which has not progressed), and in May, he used its “findings” to also ask RFK Jr. for a review during a congressional hearing. Kennedy told him that he’d already asked Makary for a “complete review.”

Most Popular

The study is also referenced in Makary and Kennedy’s letter, who’ve ignored that it’s essentially a cock-and-bull paper with no peer review, distorted metrics, and published by a nonprofit that has falsely, and baselessly, tied mifepristone to “serious adverse effects.”

“The concerns you have raised in your letter merit close examination,” the FDA letter reads. “This Administration will ensure that women’s health is properly protected by thoroughly investigating the circumstances under which mifepristone can be safely dispensed.” In 2016, the FDA approved the pill to be used up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, up from seven, and in 2023, the agency approved the pill to be prescribed through telehealth, exponentially expanding access. But Republicans want these measures rolled back, claiming it’s for women’s safety.

Given that the FDA has been notably shady about this entire process, the Center for Reproductive Rights is suing the administration. “We’ve demanded the release of administration communications on mifepristone via Freedom of Information Act requests multiple times,” Chief US Program Officer Rachana Desai Martin told Jezebel. “Our requests have been ignored. This administration calls itself the ‘most transparent in history,’ but refuses to provide readily available information about medication abortion. What do they have to hide? We are demanding real transparency and taking the Trump administration to court.”

Currently, telehealth accounts for a quarter of abortions in the U.S., and in 2023, nearly two-thirds of abortions were done with mifepristone. The pill remains the most common form of medication abortion, with shield laws currently protecting providers from legal threats for prescribing the abortion pill to patients in states with bans.

“Thanks to mifepristone, misoprostol, and a robust ecosystem of providers, abortion seekers in every state have direct access to a safe and effective way to end an early pregnancy,” Plan C Access Director and Co-founder Elisa Wells further explained to Jezebel in a statement. “Based on how this ecosystem has grown in a few short years, entirely during times of bans, we expect this access to continue no matter how courts or politicians try to stop it. Safe abortion is here to stay, largely thanks to mifepristone.”

And what was true in 2000 is still true now: mifepristone is safe, and evidence supporting so has only grown. Countless studies reveal the pills are safer than viagra and Tylenol (the latter of which has now been infamously and groundlessly linked to autism by the nation’s misinformer-in-chief earlier this week).

“The Trump administration is targeting a drug that has been FDA-approved for 25 years and safely used by millions,” Martin added. “The timing of the administration’s interest in mifepristone and its reliance on discredited right-wing policy papers instead of long-standing peer-reviewed studies suggest that anti-abortion ideology is dictating the drug regulation process.”

Of course, this was all laid out in Project 2025. So if Trump’s election wasn’t enough to motivate you to stockpile abortion pills, here’s your chance.

Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.