Center For Reproductive Rights Sues Trump Admin Over Review Of Abortion Pill

The Center for Reproductive Rights filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Friday, seeking transparency around its recent decision to review the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone. 

The group filed the complaint against the Health and Human Services Department and the Food and Drug Administration, alleging that the Trump administration is withholding information about the FDA’s announcement that it will reevaluate mifepristone. CRR said the two agencies failed to respond to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act, a law that mandates that federal agencies release requested records to members of the public.

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The reproductive rights group is suing the administration for information, including about the FDA’s process of reviewing the abortion pill and what data the agency used to decide to reevaluate a drug that has been widely and safely used for 25 years. CRR also sued for information around “the influence HHS or other parties have in the FDA’s review,” according to the complaint. 

FDA Commissioner Martin Makary announced in June that the agency plans to review mifepristone, a decision that appears to be largely based on a junk science report published in April that concluded that nearly 11% of women “experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion.”

The timeline of events leading up to Makary’s announcement “suggests political interference,” according to a CRR press release. HHS and FDA did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

“The public deserves to know if the FDA is making decisions about medication abortion based on debunked information or in response to political pressure,” Rachana Desai Martin, CRR’s chief U.S. program officer, said in a press release. “The Trump administration is targeting a drug that has been FDA-approved for 25 years and safely used by millions.” 

The junk science report was funded and published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank and advisory board member of Project 2025, the right-wing policy agenda that proposes that the president’s appointees at the FDA ban mifepristone.

The EPPC paper was not peer-reviewed and did not share its underlying data, an unusual move that makes it impossible for other researchers to corroborate the report’s findings. Data scientists told HuffPost that the report’s recommendations do not line up with the data it claims to have analyzed.

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A spokesperson for EPPC told HuffPost in April that the report was not peer-reviewed because “the extensive pro-abortion bias in the peer-review process” creates “no opportunities to publish peer-reviewed analysis that offer major substantive critiques of the abortion pill or abortion.”

The EPPC report was published just days after Makary said he had no plans to restrict mifepristone unless new data suggested it was dangerous.

Anti-abortion advocates and lawmakers circulated the report as proof that mifepristone should be restricted. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), an outspoken abortion opponent, sent a letter to Makary urging him to “follow this new data and take all appropriate action to restore critical safeguards on the use of mifepristone.” It was in response to Hawley’s letter presenting the EPPC report as fact that Makary announced his decision to review the abortion pill. 

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. also told Hawley in a May Senate hearing that the EPPC report was “alarming” and concluded mifepristone should be reviewed.  

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“The timing of the administration’s interest in mifepristone and its reliance on discredited right-wing policy papers instead of long-standing peer-reviewed studies suggest that anti-abortion ideology is dictating the drug regulation process,” Desai Martin said in CRR’s press release. 

During a Senate hearing last week, Kennedy told lawmakers that he’s working with Makary to review mifepristone. He appeared to refer to the EPPC junk science report, citing the same 11% statistic used in the paper’s findings.

“We’re getting data in all the time, new data that we’re reviewing. And we know that during the Biden administration, they actually twisted the data to bury one of the safety signals, a very high safety signal – around 11%,” Kennedy told Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.). “So we’re gonna make sure that doesn’t happen anymore.”

Read CRR’s lawsuit below.

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