By Catholics for Catholics
Republicans on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee led by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) are calling upon Health Secretary RFK Jr. and FDA Commissioner Martin Makary to make good on their promises and complete safety reviews of mifepristone, which is the abortion pill.
In a hearing on January 14, Sen. Cassidy opened by saying, “When you’re a doctor, you’re supposed to take care of your patient. When someone is pregnant, there are two patients. Both must be considered with absolute care and concern. And scientifically and morally, there’s no difference in the value of a child whether she is in her mother’s arms or she is in her mother’s womb.”
Cassidy related how one study showed nine in ten women reported their pain after taking the abortion pill as “moderate to severe” and half of women say their experience was worse than expected. He also cited the 2025 report from the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC) which found that one in ten women experience serious adverse side effects from the abortion pill, including sepsis and hemorrhaging.
Cassidy shared the heartbreaking testimony of women who had taken the abortion pill and became full of regret and grief, realizing too late they had destroyed “the most beautiful thing I’d ever created.”
The senator also stressed that women are often coerced into taking the abortion pill, and similar to how you might see signs in a female bathroom stall that ask if you are a victim of trafficking, physicians ought to ask women taking the abortion pill if they are in an abusive situation. Certainly, that question is not asked when the abortion pill is sent through the mail.
“As chairman of the HELP committee I urge Secretary Kennedy and Commissioner Makary to complete the safety review of mifepristone that they both promised us during their confirmation hearings. Republican members of this committee and many other senators expect an answer. At an absolute minimum, the previous in-person safeguards should be restored and it should be done immediately,” Sen. Cassidy stated, adding that 71% of Americans, including 67% of those who say they are pro-abortion, support requiring an in-person visit for obtaining the pill.
Safeguards around mifepristone were dangerously removed by President Obama and President Biden during their respective administrations. Before President Obama left office in 2016, his administration decreased the number of in-person visits required to obtain the abortion pill from three to one and allowed doctors to stop reporting adverse side effects. The administration also nixed the requirement for a follow-up visit with the providing doctor.
During President Biden’s administration, the requirement to visit a doctor in-person was scrapped altogether, allowing for the dangerous proliferation of “telehealth abortion” by sending abortion drugs through the mail.
Without in-person visits, a doctor cannot verify the baby’s gestational age or check for an ectopic pregnancy, which could be life threatening.
According to the National Catholic Register, an HHS spokesperson said the department is assessing whether the FDA’s risk mitigation program is providing “appropriate protections for women” and that Dr. Makary is committed to putting the abortion pill through a “rigorous, evidence-based review.”
John Yep, President of Catholics For Catholics, said that “it is common sense to at the very least restore the ‘safeguards’ surrounding mifepristone that were previously in place but recklessly removed by the Obama and Biden administrations in purely political decisions.”
“We call for more than that, however, because a pill that intentionally ends the life of an innocent baby can never be considered safe,” Yep continued. “We remind the FDA and the HHS that doctors have the primary responsibility of doing no harm. The abortion pill is fundamentally harmful. The abortion pill only benefits Big Pharma, and the amount of data about adverse side effects and emergency room visits for women who take mifepristone is appalling. ”
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