WASHINGTON — Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley announced Wednesday that he is introducing legislation to revoke U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the chemical abortion pill.
As the Trump administration stalls on delivering its promised mifepristone safety review, Hawley said during a press conference Wednesday that “only Congress can address this situation.”
“It is time for Congress to ban the use of mifepristone for abortion,” he said. “And it’s time for Congress to give the victims, the survivors, many of whom are here today, the right to recover against this company that has inflicted harm on them solely for the purpose of making profits.”
One in ten women who take the abortion pill will experience a “serious adverse event,” according to an April 2025 study of insurance data by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).
His bill would also allow women harmed by the pill to sue the drug’s manufacturers, which Hawley described as “greedy foreign corporations who are making billions of dollars in profits by endangering women’s health and shipping to them a drug that they know is dangerous.”
Several women shared stories during the press conference of complications they experienced from taking the drug, including ending up in the emergency room with a life-threatening infection and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“There wasn’t enough towels or anything else to mop the blood as it pooled on the floor around the toilet and in the tub,” Elizabeth Gillette, who was diagnosed with PTSD after her chemical abortion, described. “When I felt pressure, I felt in between my legs and I pulled out a perfectly formed embryonic sac, with my baby floating inside it, with recognizable eyes, limbs and ear buds…They didn’t tell me that there was any complications regarding this pill.”
The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a motion Friday seeking to pause or dismiss Missouri’s lawsuit asking to reinstate restrictions on the abortion pill. Pro-life organizations slammed the filing as another example of the administration “taking the side of abortion drug dealers and the radical Left against women and children.”
SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said during the press conference that it seems efforts to convince the administration to at least reinstate safety regulations for mifepristone are at a “dead end.”
“We are waiting. We are waiting. We are waiting. And I think we’ve passed the point where we decided this is a dead end,” she said. “I hope I’m wrong because the voters care.”
Rosalie Markezich, a plaintiff in Louisiana’s lawsuit whose boyfriend coerced her into taking a pill obtained through the mail, said she wants to “hold the FDA accountable.”
“Women deserve better and their stories will be heard,” she said.
In response to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s question about accountability for doctors who prescribe the pill without any knowledge of the patient, Hawley said his bill “means that a doctor would not be able to prescribe [mifepristone] in accordance with the law.”
“I think one of the most important things the bill does is that it does give rights to victims,” he said. “It gives rights to the women who are here behind and currently don’t have any recourse… It would give them the ability to get into court against Danco and these foreign corporations making these drugs.”
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