Senators Hawley and Cassidy Question FDA Partnerships on Chemical Abortion Drugs

Republican senators on Wednesday urged the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to strengthen safety standards and reconsider partnerships related to abortion pills, accusing the agency of expanding access without adequate oversight.

On the call, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., expressed frustration that the agency hasn’t already overhauled the safety parameters around abortion pills — and has instead expanded its partnerships with the drug producers that make chemical abortions available.

“My plea to the FDA is to follow the science to put safety guardrails back in place,” Hawley said. “I have asked the FDA director to take these actions. The public deserves answers.”

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Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., delivers remarks during a Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee confirmation hearing in Washington, July 16, 2025. (Valérie Plesch/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The news conference held by the senators indicates that abortion policy remains a top priority for some Republican lawmakers — even though President Donald Trump has previously shown himself content to leave questions about abortion policy to the state level. Both Hawley and Cassidy have questioned the safety of chemical abortions and their proliferation.

Notably, Republicans passed a short-term ban on Medicaid funding going to nonprofits that provide abortions as part of their One, Big Beautiful Bill Act, which became law earlier this year.

But the change didn’t stop Hawley and other lawmakers from blasting the FDA for announcing a partnership with Evita Solutions, seeking to create a new version of the key abortion drug, mifepristone.

“When I heard that the FDA had approved another generic form of misoprostol, I was shocked,” said Senator Cassidy, referring to the drug often used in combination with mifepristone. “I call them: ‘Why are you doing this?'”

President Donald Trump, joined by Republican lawmakers, signs the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act during an Independence Day military family picnic on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, July 4, 2025. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

Cassidy joined 17 other Republican senators send a letter to the FDA earlier this month, demanding to know why the agency had approved a new form of abortion medication. They requested a response by October 30.

Cassidy said the group hasn’t received anything from the agency.

“They haven’t responded, but the government has been shut down, and so I’m sure they would say, ‘Well, we can’t answer,’ but we will ask the FDA commissioner to come and talk about the FDA’s problems.”

According to an HHS spokesperson, the FDA informed the senators that their response would be delayed.

Without mifepristone and misoprostol, most abortions in the country would be impossible.

Both of these compounds harm the vitality of a pregnancy and cause the body to expel pregnancy tissue. According to According to the Guttmacher Institute, a sexual health and reproductive rights organization, mifepristone was used to induce 63% of all abortions in the United States in 2023.

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“It’s shocking,” Hawley said in a message to earlier this month. “The FDA just approved ANOTHER chemical abortion drug, even though evidence shows that chemical abortion drugs are dangerous and even fatal to the mother. And of course, 100% fatal to the child.”

Hawley said Wednesday that 11 percent of women who have a chemical abortion experience some sort of adverse health event.

“The science is really, really important. We just did one of the largest studies ever done on chemical abortion claims, based on insurance data. It was released this summer: 865,000 insurance claims were made and analyzed,” Hawley said.

The Center for Ethics and Public Policy released results in April evaluating 865,000 medication abortions prescribed between 2017 and 2023. It concluded that the rate of serious side effects was 22 times higher than indicated on the FDA label.

“That’s a sanitized way of saying they’re in very serious danger,” Hawley said.

Critics of the study said it lacked context and may overlook complicated and unrelated factors.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, an anti-abortion advocacy group, shares Hawley’s concerns about the pill’s safety. She also believes abortion pills are an easy way for women to access abortion – even in states that have restrictions against them.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, President of the Susan B. Anthony List, speaks at the National Press Club on November 30, 2021 in Washington, DC (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

“This abortion pill is an instrument to roll back (state) sovereignty. State laws are being undermined. The overall abortion rate in this country has increased since Dobbs because of the abortion pill,” Dannenfelser said, referring to the landmark 2022 case Dobbs v. Jackson that overturned the federal right to abortion.

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Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America was one of the main groups calling on Republicans to cut Medicaid funding for abortion through Trump’s One, Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Abortion advocates have focused on access to mifepristone as a way to continue the fight against abortion access — especially as the FDA has approved remote prescriptions of the drug in the wake of COVID-19.

In June, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge filed by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), arguing that the FDA improperly approved the use of mifepristone in 2001, circumventing safety requirements.

Since then, mifepristone has remained widely available, but the Supreme Court’s decision left the door open for future challenges to the FDA’s certification of the drug.

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Like other critics of chemical abortions, Hawley urged the FDA to conduct its own evaluation to determine whether abortion pills are safe and reliable products – a shared priority with HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“We need to have a full and thorough review of the data related to mifepristone (and) the health risks associated with mifepristone. We need to see the reinstatement of the safety guardrails that have historically accompanied this drug,” Hawley said.