In recent years, the language of ‘medical consensus’ has been invoked to shut down debate over some of the most divisive ethical questions in America. Mounting legal challenges suggest that what is often described by partisans on one side of the debate as ‘settled science’ may, in fact, be shaped as much by politics as it is by evidence. Nowhere is this tension clearer than in the fight over mifepristone.
Pro-abortion activists have spent years downplaying the serious and potentially life-threatening harms associated with mifepristone on the grounds that the medical community says the science of the abortion drug is ‘settled’. Research data is now beginning to suggest otherwise, evidence to which we can add the lived experiences of countless women. A recent report found that the rate of serious adverse events (SAEs) associated with mifepristone is over 20 times higher than what the FDA currently reports and that an estimated 70,000 women likely experienced a mifepristone-related SAE in 2023 alone.
