Headline Roundup • May 5th, 2025
Study From Conservative Nonprofit Suggests Abortion Pill More Dangerous Than Label Says
Summary from the AllSides News Team
New research from conservative nonprofit the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) found that serious adverse effects from the mifepristone abortion pill are at least 22 times as likely as its label warns.
The Details: Mifepristone’s label says “less than 0.5 percent” of users in clinical trials experienced “serious adverse events.” The EPPC analyzed insurance data from 865,727 mifepristone prescriptions between 2017 and 2023, and suggested 11% experienced complications like hemorrhaging, sepsis, or infection within 45 days of taking the pill. Nearly 3% of users still needed a surgical abortion.
For Context: More than 5 million women have used the drug since it received FDA approval in 2000. The combination of mifepristone and misoprostol has become the most common abortion method in recent years, representing 63% of all US abortions.
Pushback: A researcher from the Guttmacher Institute, which began as a part of Planned Parenthood in 1968 and operated as such until 2007, criticized the study for lacking the merits of a peer review.
How The Media Covered It: The story was covered widely by the right but barely the left and center. HuffPost (Left bias) described the study as “junk science” and suggested Republicans are laying "groundwork" to "restrict" usage of the pill. Both Straight Arrow News (Center) and HuffPost noted the pushback from Guttmacher. Straight Arrow and an opinion from The Federalist (Right) both highlighted the lopsided media coverage.
Written by the AllSides staff (of humans). Learn more. Support our mission. Suggest an improvement to this summary.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Mifepristone, the most commonly used drug for medication abortions, could be linked to more serious side effects than federal sources document, according to a study published Monday, April 28. The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative nonprofit whose stated mission is to bring Judeo-Christian values back to American life, released research using insurance claims over a six-year period that suggests nearly 11% of women prescribed mifepristone experienced complications, including hemorrhaging, sepsis or other infections within 45 days of consuming the pill.
EPPC said the data comes from all-payer health...
The Ethics and Public Policy Center published the report just days after FDA Commissioner Martin Makary said he has “no plans” to restrict mifepristone, which has been at the center of the abortion wars since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Makary made several headlines for his comments, seemingly assuring pro-choice Americans that he would not pull FDA approval of the drug. But in that same interview, Makary also said: “As you may know, there is an ongoing set of data that is coming into FDA on mifepristone....
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AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall
A largest-of-its-kind study found that more than 10% of women who terminate their pregnancies with abortion pills experience serious health problems, even though the drug’s warning label puts the figure at less than 0.5%. The analysis of insurance data from 865,727 prescriptions of mifepristone from 2017 to 2023 showed that within 45 days, 10.93% of women were treated for conditions including sepsis, hemorrhaging and infection, while 2.84% ended up undergoing a surgical abortion. “The real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high...
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