Kennedy targets popular abortion pill

The US Food and Drug Administration will examine the “safety and efficacy” of mifepristone, Kennedy said in a letter to Republican attorneys-general who had requested the review.

The pill, which blocks a hormone that is required for pregnancy to continue, is used in about two-thirds of abortions in the US and many in the UK.

Kennedy cited a conservative thinktank, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which published material – not peer reviewed by scientists – claiming that more women experienced side effects than ­clinical studies had established.

Brittany Fonteno, president of the National Abortion Federation, said that Kennedy’s “attacks on science and his ongoing spread of disinformation around safe medications are reckless, alarming and completely out of step with reality”.

“The facts are clear,” Fonteno said. “Mifepristone is a safe, research-backed method to end a pregnancy, used by millions with proven efficacy.”

Abortion pills are banned in many Republican-controlled states after the US supreme court ­overturned the Roe v Wade ­judgment in 2022.

If the FDA withdrew Mifepristone’s licence, it would affect women in Democratic-held areas as well. Women getting an abortion usually take mifepristone followed by misoprostol. Taken on its own, misoprostol works in 85% to 95% of cases.

Last month, doctors said there was evidence that mifepristone could reduce the risk of breast cancer, the leading cause of cancer among women.

In a paper in The Lancet Obstetrics, Gynaecology & Women’s Health, experts said pharmaceutical companies were reluctant to conduct research because of “stigma” around the drug.

Photograph by Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg via Getty Images