The senators didn’t like how things turned out, Politico reports. They don’t believe the FDA is taking the safety review regarding the abortion pill seriously.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is a committee member and spoke with Tony Perkins on Washington Watch regarding it.
“I can tell you it was behind closed doors, which says a lot,” states Hawley. “Here's what I want to see happen at the FDA. I want to see them put back into place the basic safety protocols from President (Donald) Trump's first term. You have to get a prescription to have the drug. You have to go see a doctor to take the drug.”
That should be a minimum, but these policies were eliminated by the Biden administration, Hawley said. He worries that the FDA is dragging their feet on reinstating those protocols.
Hawley informs that the FDA is supposed to be conducting a safety study on the abortion drug mifepristone. In September 2025, the HHS officially announced that it was conducting a study to determine what modifications were needed to the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) for mifepristone.
However, it is unclear to Hawley whether the study has even begun.
“I have asked repeatedly in public letters written to the FDA. I've gotten zero answers from them There's been public reporting in the news that the FDA has not even started the study yet, and I just have to tell you, I haven't heard anything to the contrary from the FDA or anybody else,” states Hawley.
At this point, he doesn’t have any confidence that the FDA will go through with the study.
He also says abortions have increased since the overturn of Roe v. Wade, and that’s because of chemical abortions.
“Before the overturn of Roe, 930,000 abortions —that’s the best number available, mostly from the abortion industry. In 2024, the most comprehensive numbers that we have at present, 1.1 million abortions, and the numbers of 2025 that have been crunched so far actually show a further increase," informs Hawley.
A Guttmacher study shows that more than 63% of abortions in the U.S. in 2020 were medicated, which is a 10% increase. The Ethics and Public Policy Center also published a study that shows chemical abortion comes with dangerous risks to the mother. Nearly 11% of women experience a severe adverse health event within 45 days of taking mifepristone. Side effects have included hemorrhaging, infection, sepsis and more.
“None of that is currently on the label for this drug. People are being lied to, lives are being lost, the babies and sometimes the mother, and it's time that we did something about it,” says Hawley.
Why revoke guardrails?
Critics ask why the Biden administration would revoke these policies. Hawley says they knew it would undermine any state laws and any Supreme Court decision.
“They did it in order to make abortion on demand feasible across the country, no matter what your state laws are. It doesn't matter if the voters of your state have said, we want to protect life. It doesn't matter now, because these abortion drugs will get mailed into your state without a doctor's prescription, without a sign-off,” explains Hawley.
He explains that the drug gets mailed in to every state in the union, with no restriction on it, often coming from overseas. One can even order it on a website, frequently free of charge.
As for why these policies are still in place, Hawley does not have an answer. He reiterates that Trump’s protocols were the minimum and that it would make a tremendous difference if the FDA reinstated them.
“When I got the first interview and cross-examined this head of FDA, I told him this to his face, you need to go back to President Trump's policies. He promised me he would do a serious review of it, but I just don't think that that review is even underway. All I can say is we've got to do something to start protecting life in a serious way,” concludes Hawley.
