Experts sound the alarm over 'shocking' study showing significant risks to women who take abortion pills

A new study exposing a significant number of "serious adverse events" occurring among women who have taken mifepristone, also known as the "abortion pill," has sparked an outcry from the pro-life community, including experts who spoke to Fox News Digital about what the study means for women in the United States. 

"The biggest thing that will shock most readers of this report is just how different the findings in this study are from what the FDA claims on the abortion drug label," Katie Glenn Daniel, SBA Pro Life America director of legal affairs, told Fox News Digital about the recently released study. 

"What they found is that more than one in ten women will go to the emergency room seeking follow-up care after taking the abortion drugs. The FDA claims that's more like one in 20 women, which is still concerning, right? If you've got a one in twenty chance of something happening, you might take that seriously, but one in 10. It is shocking," she continued. "This means hundreds of thousands of American women have gone to the hospital for complications from abortions through these abortion drugs and the FDA was not collecting information about those situations. So this study shines a light on what has been happening, what ER doctors certainly know is happening. But what our public health institutions have turned a blind eye to."

Mifepristone is a "pregnancy blocker" that is used in combination with another medication, misoprostol, to terminate pregnancies, according to Mayo Clinic. It is also used to manage early miscarriages, as it helps prepare the body to empty the uterus.

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Research by the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., has revealed that the rate of serious side effects is 22 times higher than what is indicated on the FDA-approved drug label.

After going through an abortion assisted by mifepristone, nearly 11% of women — more than one in 10 — reported experiencing "infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious or life-threatening adverse event," according to the study summary.

"These reports, which analyzed the largest known data set of real-world mifepristone use, confirm what physicians like me and our members are seeing in our clinical practice: that abortion drugs pose significant dangers to women," Dr. Christina Francis, a board-certified OB/GYN, told Fox News Digital. 

"I have had patients face life-threatening hemorrhage, infection, and more after taking these drugs, which are now available to order online without an in-person physician visit to confirm the age of the pregnancy and rule out risk factors. The fact that these data show a serious complication rate that is 22 times higher than what the FDA states reveals the urgent need for further investigation into complications of drug-induced abortions and for policymakers and agencies to reprioritize women's safety over the interests of the abortion industry. Women and their children deserve better care than these dangerous drugs."

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Mifepristone, which the Biden administration took steps to ensure was made available to women through the mail, is the most well-known abortion pill in the United States, and approximately 63% of all abortions in the U.S. in 2023 were medication abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

This was an increase from 53% in 2020.

"We knew that the Biden administration's changes to the abortion drug prescribing, which included allowing these drugs to be sent through to mail. We knew that that was harmful for women and girls because there is no medical oversight," Daniel told Fox News Digital. "You don't even know if a pregnant woman's getting these drugs. There have been cases where men order these drugs, to slip them to somebody. The state of Louisiana has a case right now where a mother ordered them and forced her daughter to take them, even though the pregnancy was wanted. So you really lose a lot of the safeguards that are in place when somebody actually physically goes to a doctor's office."

Daniel told Fox News Digital she hopes this report will encourage the Trump administration’s FDA to take action to ensure that women and unborn children are protected. 

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"A drug that puts one in ten women in the hospital is certainly not a drug that is quote unquote good for women or caring for women and I think we need to be realistic about that," Daniel said. 

Daniel also explained that the true harm from the pill is likely even worse than the study only includes certain years and only women who used insurance.

"So there are tons of women, including those who are the most vulnerable, who are left out of this data," Daniel pointed out. 

"There is a lot more to look out here," Daniel continued. "We see this as the starting point of what the FDA, the CDC, our public health institutions, and our physicians need to be looking at. And we need to have an honest conversation about the fact that 20 years of data shows that these drugs are deadly for children, but they're also very dangerous for in girls."

Fox News Digital’s Melissa Rudy contributed to this report