Anti-abortion leaders are cheering legislation introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley to ban the distribution and use of mifepristone, a medication used in most abortions in the U.S.
Anti-abortion groups have been frustrated that women living in states that banned abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade have been able to access abortion medication by mail. They have been urging the Trump administration to withdraw a more than 20-year-old FDA approval for the drug’s use. Anti-abortion activists were outraged when in October 2025 the FDA approved a second generic version of the drug. Under pressure, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., announced a review of the drug’s safety.
Hawley apparently got tired of waiting for the administration to act. And he wants Congress to take the decision out of the FDA’s hands. After his press conference announcing the legislation on Wednesday, Hawley spoke with the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. “If Congress says we’re gonna take mifepristone off the market for abortion, that’s how it’s gonna be,” Hawley said. “No future liberal administration will be able to roll that back. It will be in the law.”
When Kennedy announced a safety review of the long-approved medication, which has a long safety record, the libertarian Cato Institute criticized the move, saying “Reopening a safety review for this drug appears to be driven by political rather than scientific reasons. This is not about the procedure itself but about the principle that safe, approved drugs should not be subject to political interference.”
Hawley’s claim that the medication is “inherently dangerous” is based in part on a study published last year by the religious-right Ethics in Public Policy Center, though that study’s design and conclusions have been widely criticized. “It’s more like an anti-abortion press release with a chart to make it seem credible,” wrote one abortion-rights advocate.
In January, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a review of the FDA’s decision-making regarding mifepristone, which concluded that “FDA oversight of mifepristone, developed during key moments from 2011 to 2023, has been shaped by scientific evidence and a cautious regulatory approach led by scientists at the agency.”
Among the speakers at Hawley’s press conference, in addition to women who say they were harmed by the use of mifepristone, were Hawley’s wife, anti-abortion advocate Erin Hawley; Kristen Waggoner, head of the religious-right legal group Alliance Defending Freedom and a potential future Supreme Court nominee; anti-abortion activists Marjorie Dannenfelser and Penny Nance; and Hawley’s friend Sean Feucht, a Christian nationalist musician and political activist who is partnering with the Trump administration to make religious revivals part of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Feucht said he was speaking “as a spiritual leader” calling on other spiritual leaders to “rise up” and “raise a battle cry” on behalf of Hawley’s bill.
At Hawley’s press conference, a questioner asked what he would say to Missouri voters who passed a constitutional amendment in 2024 protecting the right to abortion. Hawley noted that an effort to repeal that amendment will be on the ballot this fall and that he will be “out there making the case” for it.
