F.D.A. Decisions on Abortion Pill Were Based on Science, New Analysis Finds
“We found that F.D.A. staff and scientists were basing the recommendations on the evidence, and that’s how it’s supposed to be,” said one of the study’s authors, Dr. Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “The F.D.A. wasn’t making decisions that suggest that they were on one side or another of larger societal debates governing mifepristone regulation.”
One major exception to the overall finding occurred during the first Trump administration, the authors wrote.
In 2020, as the Covid pandemic raged, and government health authorities advised people to stay home, major reproductive health organizations filed a lawsuit asking the F.D.A. to lift its requirement that women obtain mifepristone in person from health providers. The F.D.A.’s scientists supported that request, finding that research indicated that the pills were safe to be prescribed by telemedicine and mailed, without an in-person medical visit, but the agency’s leadership declined to lift the restriction and argued against it in the lawsuit, even appealing to the Supreme Court.
F.D.A. Decisions on Abortion Pill Were Based on Science, New Analysis Finds
A study of more than 5,000 pages of agency documents on mifepristone over 12 years found that agency leaders almost always followed the evidence-ba...
