RFK Jr. plans to review a safe, effective, and necessary abortion pill
A quick brief/trusted information on mifepristone before the newly revealed Fifth Horseman of Pestilence tells you otherwise
Sunday, September 28th was the 25th anniversary of the Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) approving the pill mifepristone for use in abortion. The FDA quietly approved another generic version (identical to name-brand) of the drug on Tuesday, September 30th, before the current government shutdown. Now, Health and Human Services (US HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in a letter to Republican state attorneys general, says that he plans for the FDA to re-review the safety of the drug.
Mifepristone is one of the two of the most common early pregnancy abortion pills, and is used in combination with the other most common pill, misoprostol (63% of abortions in 2023 were medication abortions using mifepristone and misoprostol). The combination is 97% effective during the first 63 days of pregnancy (9 weeks), but has also been shown to be effective in the second trimester (14 weeks). However, it is only approved by FDA through ten weeks of gestation. WHO has approved it through twelve weeks.
Mifepristone is safe and effective — the study RFK Jr cites as reasoning for his review is not peer-reviewed and methodologically flawed
Decades of high-quality research demonstrate that mifepristone is exceedingly safe. As stated earlier, mifepristone medication abortions have an over 95% success rate, with serious complications only occurring less than 1% of the time. According to the FDA, there were five deaths associated for mifepristone use for every 1 million people in the US who have used the drug since its approval in 2000 — a death rate of 0.0005%. That makes this pill safer than penicillin and Viagra.
As expected, the study that Kennedy cites as his reasoning (notably suggested by the Republican attorneys general for him to cite) for a new review of the drug has a deluge of issues. This study, which claims that approximately 11% of women who take mifepristone experience “serious adverse events” is not peer-reviewed, not transparent about its data source, and does not well-define such serious adverse events. The study’s vague definition of serious adverse events does not fit FDA’s definition and could be overcounted due to the diagnostic codes used — if you’re a returning reader of Wauneka Health, think back to Dr. Retsef Levi’s bogus emergency cardiovascular events and COVID-19 vaccination in Israel study, which the Israel Health Ministry criticized as possibly overcounting true cardiovascular events because calls could be related to other events such as suicides and chronic illness. In addition to this, both of the authors appear to have previously been associated with The Heritage Foundation, a self-proclaimed “research and educational institution whose mission is to build and promote conservative public policies” with a deep history of influence in Trump’s administrations. The “study” was “published” (again, not peer-reviewed), on the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) website, which is a conservative think-tank that has been criticized for its political bias in its research.
Mifepristone is necessary — it is a safe abortion option that is also used in the event of miscarriage, painful uterine growths, postpartum hemorrhaging, and more
Mifepristone is a vital tool in reproductive health. Conservatives have attacked this medication for decades precisely because it is a safe, effective, and accessible form of abortion. In 2021, the FDA removed the requirement for mifepristone to only be dispensed in person, allowing mail-order and telehealth services to increase access to the medication. In addition to use for abortion, mifepristone is an important medication for managing miscarriage, uterine fibroids (non-cancerous growths in the uterus), postpartum hemorrhaging, and other conditions.
Let’s be clear — this move by Kennedy is a political move by himself and Republicans to appease a pro-life constituency, and is not informed by science. It is abundantly clear that this administration does not care about child-bearing people’s health, women’s health in general, infant and children’s health — in fact, this administration wants these people to needlessly suffer. Across the board, for experiences that this administration’s men in particular will probably never have, their message to us is: “Tough it out.”
Credit for aggregation of many of the sources used in this article goes to my alma mater’s newsletter, Emory Rollins School of Public Health’s Public Health News. Learn about public health topics and possibly furthering your own public health education here.
Publication: Wauneka Health will cover emerging public health topics in the US and globally, aiming to resist Trump’s anti-science agenda and provide credible health information during the current “information blackout” caused by government and academic funding cuts. The newsletter is named to honor Annie Dodge Wauneka, “The Legendary Mother of Navajo Nation,” an influential leader of Navajo Nation on the Navajo Nation Council. Wauneka grew up during the 1918 Spanish Flu and saw how it ravished her community. In particular, she observed how the language barrier between her fellow Navajo and United States public health workers lead to cases being overlooked. After this pandemic, she dedicated her life to improving her Nation’s public health outcomes, becoming the three-term head of the council’s Health and Welfare Committee and working tirelessly to improve her Nation’s health education. She is known for her focus on eradicating tuberculosis in her Nation — vowing to not repeat the failures of the Spanish Flu during the early 1950s tuberculosis epidemic in Navajo Nation, Wauneka authored a Navajo (Diné bizaad) dictionary for English medical terms. This dictionary contributed to a 35% drop in tuberculosis infections by 1970. In 1963, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Lyndon B. Johnson, as well as the Indian Council Fire Achievement Award and the Navajo Medal of Honor. She holds an honorary doctorate in public health from University of New Mexico and was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Miranda chose to honor Wauneka not only for her impressive achievements in public health, but because of Miranda’s personal connection to the Navajo people after having the honor of serving with them as an assistant tribal liaison during the COVID-19 pandemic. More on Wauneka here.
Author: Miranda Mitchell, MPH (“Roo McGuire”) is an environmental health scientist. Opinions are her own and do not represent the institutions she was previously affiliated with. She is a graduate of Emory University and Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, as well as former intern at the Office of Children’s Health at US EPA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., graduate work-study at US CDC Headquarters at its Roybal Campus in the National Center for Emerging Zoonotic Infectious Diseases (NCEZID), Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) fellow and full-time employee at US Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) at US CDC’s Chamblee Campus. Her Master’s thesis, published in Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID), investigated the potential transmission dynamics and genetic diversity of a bacteria in bats and their ectoparasites. Her areas of expertise are health risk assessment, environmental health science, molecular biology, and infectious disease epidemiology. She currently makes public health and political educational content here and on Twitch.tv/roomcguire, while she awaits her first child and hopes to pursue a doctorate sometime after 2028. She has never received any money from pharmaceutical companies and declares no conflicts of interest. She apologizes for the HBO “Chernobyl” quote, but not really, that show is awesome. Real quotes from chemist Valery Legasov’s tapes are available here.