FDA's Mail-Order Abortion Pill Policy Increased Serious Harm to Women, New Data Shows

The actual rate found in real-world data: 10.15% to 11.50%.

That's a 20-to-23-fold gap between what the government has been telling women and what's actually happening to them.

Those numbers come from the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), which analyzed insurance claims from over 865,000 chemical abortions between 2017 and 2023, according to EWTN News. Complications tracked include hemorrhage, sepsis, infection, and hospitalization.

What Removing In-Person Requirements Did

The FDA originally required an in-person visit to prescribe mifepristone. That requirement was put in flux in 2020 and formally scrapped in 2021.

The EPPC found the serious adverse event rate increased by 1.35 percentage points after that requirement was removed, according to EWTN News. For women with ectopic pregnancies — a condition where a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus and can only be diagnosed with a physical exam and ultrasound — the rate of harm was 52% higher after the in-person requirement was revoked.

An ectopic pregnancy is not detectable by telehealth. It is not visible over a video screen. If a woman with an undetected ectopic pregnancy takes mifepristone by mail, she faces risk of a life-threatening rupture.

Heartbeat International, a worldwide network of pregnancy help centers, told EWTN News it is receiving increasing calls from women experiencing heavy bleeding, severe pain, and infection after chemical abortions. "Many women we hear from express a feeling of betrayal, as they were sold on the idea that abortion was no big deal," the organization said.

Planned Parenthood Is Closing Clinics and Calling It Progress

While this safety data is piling up, Planned Parenthood is accelerating in exactly the wrong direction.

On March 31, 2025, Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania shut down its Moon Township location — the 18th Planned Parenthood site to close in Pennsylvania since 2010, according to PA Family. When announcing the closure, the organization pointed to telehealth and pill delivery as alternatives.

What's disappearing is in-person access, ultrasounds, and hands-on medical evaluation. What's replacing it is a pill in a mailbox.

The abortion industry's shift to mail-order delivery is a business model decision being sold as expanded access. The EPPC data suggests it is expanding access to serious harm.

The Government Is — Finally — Starting to Ask

In May 2025, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered a fresh safety review of mifepristone and asked FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary to examine current data, according to PA Family. Kennedy told a Senate HELP Committee hearing that recent research was "alarming" and said at minimum the drug's label should be changed.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey sued the FDA over mifepristone approval, citing safety risks, according to Fox News.

Mifepristone is now used in more than 6 out of 10 abortions in the United States. A drug used in the majority of abortions in this country has a real-world complication rate 20 times higher than its label claims — and the federal government spent years loosening the rules around it instead of tightening them.

What Mainstream Coverage Is Getting Wrong

Left-leaning outlets have framed any scrutiny of mail-order abortion pills as a political attack on reproductive rights. That framing ignores women who are being hospitalized.

Right-leaning coverage, meanwhile, sometimes buries the real story — the specific data on ectopic pregnancies and the concrete before-and-after numbers — in favor of broader ideological framing.

Neither approach serves the women who opened a package, took a pill without seeing a doctor, and ended up in an emergency room.

The Hill published a first-person account from a woman who nearly died after taking abortion drugs — even with some level of medical oversight in place. Her conclusion: "They don't belong in the mail."

What Happens Next

If you are a woman considering a chemical abortion, the FDA's label is not giving you accurate risk information. The real complication rate is dramatically higher than what you're being told.

If you have any possibility of an ectopic pregnancy, taking mifepristone without a physical exam and ultrasound is genuinely dangerous.

The government loosened these safety standards. Now it's reviewing them. That review needs to be fast, honest, and completely immune to pressure from the abortion industry.