On Wednesday, January 14, the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) held a hearing examining medication abortion, the most commonly used method of abortion in the United States accounting for at least 63% of clinician-provided abortions. Mifepristone—the first in a two-drug medication abortion regimen—was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) nearly three decades ago. Since then, its safety and efficacy has been repeatedly confirmed through the agency’s rigorous review of scientific data and literature, the real-world experience of more than 7.5 million women in the U.S. who have safely used mifepristone, and the FDA’s own safety monitoring and reporting systems.

Nevertheless, anti-abortion organizations and politicians continue to pressure the FDA to take immediate action to further restrict access to this life-saving, essential medication. In fact, anti-abortion Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have attempted to justify the FDA’s current review of mifepristone by citing a self-published position paper from a far-right organization that has been thoroughly discredited for its many flaws. The Center for Reproductive Rights is suing the Trump administration for withholding information about this supposed safety review, including records documenting these attempts at political inference and resulting FDA actions.

“Today’s hearing marks the latest step in a pressure campaign to restrict medication abortion, undermining the fundamental human right of every person to make their own health care decisions,” said Rachana Desai Martin, Chief U.S. Program Officer of the Center for Reproductive Rights. “Under the guise of ‘protecting women,’ junk science proponents in the Trump administration and Congress are falsely painting reproductive health care as dangerous, misleading, and ineffective, despite overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary. The FDA cannot bow to interference by regulating vital medications based on a president’s wishes or the political whims of anti-abortion extremists.”

In response to today’s hearing, the Center for Reproductive Rights has submitted a statement for the record outlining the timeline of the FDA’s rigorous review of mifepristone over the past 25 years and documenting the concerning evidence of attempts to politically influence the FDA. You can find the full statement here.