{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415115", "The Daily Wire article on Smith, Harshbarger-led letter'\"Reverse This Wrong\": Republicans Push RFK To Fix Biden's Abortion Drug Mistakes'", "2025-11-21", "2025", "2025-11", "Republican", "House", "NJ", "Christopher H. Smith", "S000522", "chrissmith.house.gov", "chrissmith", "https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx", "scraper", "By Mary Margaret Olohan\n\nPublished November 21, 2025\n\nWASHINGTON\u2014Republicans are calling on the Department of Health and Human Services to take \u201cimmediate action\u201d to reinstate safety requirements on abortion drugs, highlighting a growing body of evidence showing that the drugs are causing severe and underreported harm to women.\n\nIn a letter first obtained by The Daily Wire, New Jersey Rep. Christopher Smith and Tennessee Rep. Diana Harshbarger call on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to \u201cat a minimum, reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.\u201d Until 2023, the FDA required abortion drugs to be administered to women under a doctor\u2019s supervision.\n\n\u201cThe need for urgent investigation and review of this drug comes in the wake of the Biden-Harris administration\u2019s egregious action to remove critical safeguards that once applied to abortion drugs, and the FDA\u2019s approval of a new abortion drug generic in September 2025,\u201d write the 175 lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA), and Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-MN).\n\n\u201cUnder your leadership, HHS and FDA can reverse this wrong,\u201d they conclude. \u201cWe urge you to immediately reinstate the REMS requiring in-person dispensing of mifepristone and to expedite the promised review by the FDA into the dangers of abortion drugs.\u201d\n\nThe move is significant since President Joe Biden\u2019s administration green-lit the removal of safety standards on the drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing women to easily obtain the drugs at home. Pro-life advocates have long argued that women are being put in danger simply from taking the abortion drugs, but they are even more anxious about women taking the drugs on their own.\n\nNew studies are showing that complications are \u201castonishingly higher than what is reported on the drug\u2019s label,\u201d the lawmakers say: \u201cEven the current Obama FDA-approved label for mifepristone \u2014 which the data show understates the dangers to women \u2014 says that roughly 1 in 25 women who use mifepristone as directed will end up in the emergency room.\u201d\n\nMeanwhile, abortion proponents and legacy media insist the drugs are safer than Tylenol. President Donald Trump\u2019s administration has weighed the issue carefully, cognizant of how electorally delicate abortion is. And in early October, the FDA approved a new abortion pill, shocking the president\u2019s pro-life supporters.\n\nAt the time, Kennedy put out a statement clarifying that he understood that the Biden administration had removed mifepristone\u2019s safety standards \u201cwithout studying the safety risks.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe are filling that gap,\u201d he promised, sharing that he and Makary wrote to state attorneys general and promised to \u201creview all the evidence \u2014 including real-world outcomes \u2014 on the safety of this drug.\u201d\n\n\u201cRecent studies already point to serious risks when mifepristone is used without proper medical oversight,\u201d he said, and he clarified of the new abortion pill that that the FDA just approved: \u201c[The FDA] only approved a second generic mifepristone tablet because federal law requires approval when an application proves the generic is identical to the brand-name drug.\u201d\n\nIn their appeal, the Republican lawmakers express gratitude to Kennedy and Makary for serving the most pro-life president in American history, saying that Trump has \u201cdone more to advance a culture of life and the protection of women and children from the violence of abortion than any president before him.\u201d But they also cite polling from McLaughlin and Associates that found that 7 in 10 voters agree that it \u201cmakes sense\u201d to bring the former FDA safety standards back, arguing that \u201cclear majorities of Americans recognize the extreme overreach of the previous administration\u2019s actions.\u201d\n\nThe lawmakers also dive into how the abortion drugs affect mothers, citing an Ethics and Public Policy Center study showing the adverse events from mifepristone are about 22 times more frequent than the FDA recognizes. That study found that almost 11% of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other life-threatening events after aborting their unborn baby with mifepristone.\n\n\u201cWhile we have long known that mifepristone causes the death by starvation of children alive in the womb \u2014 it is baby poison \u2014 we now know with greater certitude that their mothers are also being seriously harmed. Despite the mainstream media and the Biden-Harris administration perpetuating the lie that these drugs are \u2018safer than taking a Tylenol,\u2019 science and women\u2019s lived experiences clearly say otherwise.\u201d\n\nAnd while the Biden administration claimed that the removal of safety standards was in response to the COVID pandemic, to help women receive \u201cmedically necessary\u201d care, the lawmakers argue that the former administration was really just using COVID as a \u201csmokescreen\u201d to \u201caccomplish its radical abortion agenda, which even now wreaks havoc across the nation.\u201d\n\n\u201cEven the current Obama FDA-approved label for mifepristone \u2014 which the data show understates the dangers to women \u2014 says that roughly 1 in 25 women who use mifepristone as directed will end up in the emergency room,\u201d they write.\n\nThey also say that the Biden FDA ignored warning signs from the studies on which it had already relied, including data showing that 3% of the women who took the drugs need to be hospitalized, \u201ca 330% increase over the rate on the approved drug label,\u201d data showing that 6% of participants had unplanned visits to emergency rooms, surgery was required to complete the abortions for 4.1% of the women, and, in the telemedicine group, 5.8% of women had emergency room visits.\n\n\u201cBeyond the studies, women tell us how they have suffered harm from mifepristone, and stories of coercion and abuse involving abortion drugs now run rampant,\u201d they continue. \u201cReal women like Rosalie Markezich \u2014 who is just one example of many \u2014 felt coerced by her boyfriend to take abortion drugs that he ordered from an out-of-state prescriber in her name and had delivered to her home through the U.S. Postal Service.\u201d\n\n\u201cRosalie did not want to have an abortion, but Biden\u2019s egregious weakening of mifepristone\u2019s safety standards let her boyfriend obtain abortion drugs and force her to take them,\u201d they argue. \u201cThe dangerous Biden mail-order scheme was designed to give abortion activists license to mail drugs everywhere, even into states like Markezich\u2019s home state of Louisiana that have pro-life protections for pregnant mothers and their unborn babies.\u201d", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T19:52:45Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://chrissmith.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=415115"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7877452298998833, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}