Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused the Biden administration of manipulating abortion pill safety data.
Kennedy Jr. made the remark during a Senate Finance Committee hearing on Thursday about the Trump administration’s health care agenda. Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) specifically questioned the HHS secretary about the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) safety review of mifepristone, the first drug used in a two-drug medication abortion regimen, after a study was released in April suggesting the abortion pill complications are 22 times higher than previously reported. Lankford said:
You’ve made public statements on this, and the FDA commissioner has made public statements on the issue of reviewing the safety issues of mifepristone. Your comments early on were that every drug needs to be treated the same, needs to look at the same and not have political biases in how things are actually examined. There were a lot of changes on the allocation of mifepristone for elective abortions under the Biden administration. It’s now open anyone without a prescription on it. You don’t have to go through a doctor on it. There’s all kinds of issues that are happening now on it.
“So the question was: you’d said that there would be a review on that, just to be able to look at it, to make sure we’re following all safety protocols. Do you know a timing on that review?” he continued.
Kennedy Jr. said that while he could not provide the “exact timing” of the review, he spoke to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary on Wednesday, and Makary said the review is “progressing apace.”
“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 with a very high safety signal around 11 percent,” Kennedy Jr. alleged. “So we’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen anymore. We’re producing honest science and gold standard science on that. I’ll keep you abreast of where we are.”
Kennedy did not further elaborate on which data were allegedly manipulated by the pro-abortion Biden administration.
Kennedy Jr. said in May that he ordered the FDA to conduct a “complete review” of the abortion pill, in response to the new study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).
That study found that 10.93 percent of women who had mifepristone abortions experienced severe complications including sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following the abortion. The percentage is significantly higher than the less than 0.5 percent in clinical trials reported on the FDA-approved drug label. The study is based on analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database that includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023.
“It’s alarming,” Kennedy Jr. said of the study’s findings when questioned about it by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) at a Senate Health, Labor, Education and Pensions (HELP) Committee hearing that month.
“I have asked Marty Makary, who is the director at FDA, to do a complete review and report back,” he added.
Makary committed to review the safety of mifepristone in a June letter to Hawley.
“FDA is committed to safeguarding public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and quality of the products it regulates. The Agency carefully evaluates the scientific data, leveraging rigorous science to make informed decisions. As with all drugs, FDA continues to closely monitor the postmarking safety data on mifepristone for the medical termination of early pregnancy,” Makary said in the letter. “As the Commissioner of Food and Drugs, I am committed to conducting a review of mifepristone and working with the professional career scientists at the Agency who review this data.”
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In 2023, medication abortions accounted for 63 percent of all abortions within the formal U.S. healthcare system — meaning an estimated 642,700 unborn babies died in medication abortions, according to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute. The percentage was up from an estimated 53 percent in 2020 and 39 percent in 2017. The report did not account for abortion pills obtained through underground national and international networks, including those that send pills to women in states with abortion restrictions.
In a medication abortion, mifepristone blocks the action of progesterone, which the mother’s body produces to nourish the pregnancy. When progesterone is blocked, the lining of the mother’s uterus deteriorates, and blood and nourishment are cut off from the developing baby, who then dies inside the mother’s womb. The drug misoprostol (also called Cytotec) then causes contractions and bleeding to expel the baby from the mother’s uterus.
Katherine Hamilton is a political reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on X @thekat_hamilton
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