(The Lion) — Senator Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, introduced a bill Wednesday that would bar the use of mifepristone for chemical abortions and allow women harmed by the drug to seek compensation.

“We are here today to issue a call to action. To call on the United States Congress to stand up and to protect the innocent unborn, to protect the health and safety of women whose lives are endangered by the abortion drug, known as mifepristone,” Hawley said at a press briefing Wednesday afternoon.

Congress holds the authority to regulate interstate drugs and the power to legislate, Hawley said. He called on his colleagues to support the Safeguarding Women from Chemical Abortion Act, saying “only Congress can act.”

The Food and Drug Administration first approved mifepristone in 2000 under specific prescription requirements. Since then, the Obama and Biden administrations removed several requirements to make the drug more accessible and less regulated, Hawley said.

“They did this for one simple reason, and it had nothing to do with protecting women’s health. Just the opposite,” Hawley said. “They did it because of abortion politics. They did it because they wanted to turn mifepristone into the driver of abortion on demand.”

An ‘inherently dangerous’ drug

Since 2000, more than 7.5 million women have taken mifepristone to end a pregnancy. After the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade and returning abortion policy to the states, chemical abortions now account for 63% of procedures nationwide, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

The drug was billed as safe, but real-world data published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center last spring found roughly 11% of women “experience at least one serious adverse event,” such as hemorrhaging, infection or sepsis, within 45 days of taking mifepristone.

“This is a drug that is incredibly widespread and is inherently dangerous,” Hawley said. “It is also inherently prone to abuse. This is a dangerous drug … a drug that is all too often used to hurt women.”

At the press briefing, several women testified about the harms of taking mifepristone, including coercion, long-term trauma and permanent physical damage.

Elizabeth Gillette, a mother who lives in Oregon, said Planned Parenthood staff pressured her to take the drug by telling her she had already miscarried. When she asked to see the ultrasound, a nurse told her, “that’s not our policy.”

After repeatedly asking, Gillette said the nurse showed her a still image – not a live ultrasound – to convince her to take the drug.

“I came to Planned Parenthood for help and support, and instead, they began to coerce the chemical abortion pill,” Gillette said.

After taking the pill, she delivered a formed baby in an amniotic sac in her bathroom, she said, despite being told she would experience only minor bleeding. Gillette said she continues to struggle with post-traumatic stress disorder following the experience.

Women experienced pain, complications

Mayra Rodriguez, who worked at Planned Parenthood for 17 years, said she initially believed she was helping women but later concluded the organization misled patients.

“We didn’t know that she will be fine, but we’re instructed to tell them, ‘you will be fine,’” Rodriguez said, describing calls from women experiencing severe pain after taking the drug.

Also speaking at the briefing, Shanyce Thomas, a nursing student originally from Connecticut, described life-threatening complications she said she experienced after taking mifepristone.

“The abortion pill nearly cost me my life, and the consequences will stay with me forever,” she said, describing the partial hysterectomy she later underwent because of infection.

Rebekah Hagan, a mother originally from California, said her son was born after one of the first successful abortion pill reversals 13 years ago.

“Young, scared moms and dads deserve the truth, and the truth is this: the abortion pill is not simple, and the abortion pill is not safe,” she said.

Biden admin removed safeguards

In 2023, the Biden administration’s FDA removed the requirement for an in-person doctor’s appointment to prescribe mifepristone, allowing the drug to be mailed to patients in many cases. Critics say the change has enabled people to obtain the drug without direct medical supervision.

“Make no mistake, abortion drugs are not about women’s health,” Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, the senator’s wife, said at the briefing. “They are reckless. They are a black box drug that sends at least one in 25 women to the hospital. …

“And when the Biden administration stripped away that last remaining safeguard, they did so in the face of studies that acknowledged that more women would be sent to the emergency room, that more women would be hospitalized, and they did it anyway,” she continued.

Erin Hawley, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, is representing the state of Louisiana and plaintiff Rosalie Markezich in a lawsuit against the FDA over its distribution rules for mifepristone.

“My then-boyfriend would not have been able to order these drugs if the FDA had not recklessly removed the requirement for an in-person office visit before prescribing them,” Markezich said at the briefing.

Dr. Christina Francis of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists said she has seen multiple complications linked to the drug.

“Medical malpractice and malfeasance is being peddled as health care, but the unregulated pushing of these abortion pills is anything but,” she said. “The purpose of medicine is health healing and wholeness, and dangerous abortion drugs are the exact opposite of this.”

Hawley argued the widespread distribution of mifepristone is driven largely by profit.

“They know it. They don’t care, because they’re making billions of dollars off of it,” he said. “It is time for Congress to do something about this racket, and it is a racket. It is time for Congress to ban the use of mifepristone for abortion.”