When, as health minister, former PM Tony Abbott tried to block the introduction of the abortion pill RU-486, he eventually conceded his opposition as a mistake. He had, he said, let his religious convictions override what he calls the ‘publicly justifiable’ convictions a politician must adhere to. But was Abbott on to something, after all? Were there ‘publicly justifiable’ reasons – medical reasons – for trying to block RU-486, also known as mifepristone? A new study from the US claims there may be.
A new study has exposed “serious adverse events” linked to mifepristone, also known as the "abortion pill" […]
Research by the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington, DC, has revealed that the rate of serious side effects is 22 times higher than what is indicated on the FDA-approved drug label.
After going through an abortion assisted by mifepristone, nearly 11 per cent of women – more than one in 10 – reported experiencing “infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious or life-threatening adverse event,” according to the study summary.
The study claims to be more thoroughgoing than the initial clinical trials that led to the approval of RU-486.
The study used insurance claims data that includes more than 865,000 medication abortions prescribed between 2017 and 2023, resulting in what is described as the largest-ever dataset on chemical abortion.
“By contrast, the current FDA-approved drug label is based on the results of 10 clinical trials with a total of 30,966 women, less than 0.5 per cent of whom reportedly experienced severe adverse reactions,” the study states.
“Some of these trials were conducted as long as 42 years ago.”
The study authors – Jamie Bryan Hall, EPPC’s director of data analysis, and Ryan T Anderson, EPPC’s president – called the results a “truly shocking and sad reality” […]
Based on the study, the researchers are calling on the FDA to reinstate the original safety protections that they required when they approved mifepristone, stating that “women deserve the truth.”
At least one OBGYN backed the findings of the study.
Christina Francis, M.D., CEO of the American Association of Pro Life OBGYNs, who is based in Ft Wayne, Indiana, was not involved in the research but commented on the significance of the outcome […]
“The findings of this study, which analyzes nearly 900,000 drug-induced abortions, align with what I have seen in my two decades of practice as an OB-GYN, during which I have cared for many women who have been lied to about the safety of abortion drugs and suffered significant complications from them,” she told Fox News Digital.
But is the study the damning evidence it claims to be? As always with claims that a ‘study finds’, you should have your bullshit filters on high.
It should not have escaped your notice that, as CEO of the American Association of Pro Life OBGYNs, Dr Francis has an obvious ideological axe to grind.
So, as it happens, do the study authors.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center is “Washington, DC’s premier institute working to apply the riches of the Jewish and Christian traditions to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics, in pursuit of America’s continued civic and cultural renewal.” So, yet more ideological axe-grinders.
Which doesn’t necessarily disqualify the study: just because a source is biased doesn’t make its claims automatically wrong. But, motivation aside, there do appear to be problems with the study.
Professor Jessie Hill, a health law expert at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, also reviewed the study findings […]
Hill pointed out that the EPPC’s study is not peer-reviewed and questioned its “potential bias.”
She said to the mirror. Because, as it happens, Hill is just as biased in the opposite direction. Not only is she a lawyer, not a doctor, according to her academic bio:
Professor Hill is a frequent lecturer and consultant on reproductive rights issues, and she is currently litigating numerous challenges to abortion restrictions in Ohio. She is the founding director of the Reproductive Rights Law Initiative.
But what else does Hill have to say, apart from, ‘they’re just as biased as I am’?
“The study uses insurance claims data, but insurance claims are an imperfect proxy for causal medical outcomes,” she told Fox News Digital. “They often lack context – a claim for hemorrhage, for instance, may not even be causally linked to mifepristone itself.”
Hill also objected to the comparison of modern claims data to the FDA’s clinical trial data.
“Clinical trials have rigorous standards for defining and reporting adverse events. Claims data are generated for billing purposes, not scientific analysis, and often overcount or misclassify events.”
This is true enough. We also know that clinical drug trials too often have a pecuniary interest in fudging data and minimising risks.
So, once again, questions of science and health are obscured by a fog of political warfare.
