The pro-life movement has low expectations ahead of the deadline for the Food and Drug Administration to provide an update on its abortion pill safety review, leaders tell the Daily Signal.
“I’m not expecting much,” Tom McCluskey, director of government affairs at CatholicVote, told the Daily Signal. “I mean, everybody says, but nobody confirms, that nothing is going to be allowed to happen until after the elections.”
After the Trump Department of Justice requested a pause on a case challenging mail-order abortion in Louisiana while the FDA conducts its abortion pill safety review, the 5th Circuit Court ordered the FDA to provide an update on Oct. 7.
The state of Louisiana sued the FDA for approving mail-order abortion on behalf of Rosalie Markezich, a young Louisiana woman whose boyfriend coerced her into taking abortion drugs that he ordered from a doctor in California. Alliance Defending Freedom is representing the state.
In 2023, the Biden administration removed the in-person dispensing requirement from the Mifepristone Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, making abortion drugs available by mail. Despite calls from the pro-life movement, the Trump administration has not restored the requirement that a woman see a medical professional before obtaining abortion drugs.
As the deadline approaches for an update on the safety review, pro-life advocates say they aren’t expecting any significant movement to curb mail-order abortion.
One pro-life operative said expectations are low because the FDA has disappointed the movement in the past. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. first committed to conduct the review in January 2025, but the public has yet to see results.
“We’re hopeful the administration will follow the facts, hold Big Abortion accountable, and take action,” the operative said. “Pro-lifers have low expectations because we’ve been let down before—but this is an opportunity to finally get serious about the dangers of chemical abortion and ultimately end it.”
Alliance Defending Freedom’s legal counsel on the case isn’t sure what to expect from the update.
“The FDA has been fairly mum about anything having to do with the study, even including the protocol and what it is exactly that they are doing in order to study the safety of mifepristone,” ADF legal counsel told the Daily Signal. “It’s honestly anyone’s guess what we’re going to hear on Wednesday.”
It’s possible the court will lift the stay on the case after FDA provides an update, legal counsel said.
“If that update doesn’t say very much, we could go back down at the district court while the 5th Circuit is pending and continue litigating there,” the counsel said.
While ADF hopes the update is not vague, it is concerned by reports that not much movement is happening on the review.
“Meanwhile, that’s irreparable harm that’s happening in the state of Louisiana,” the counsel said. “Even if the agency were to find that mifepristone safety review concludes that they needed to return safeguards, they still would have to go through an administrative process, and the earliest that we would see relief would be the end of 2027-2028 at this point, and that does nothing to alleviate or fix or cure the lawfulness of the 2023 REMS decision—that’s the thing that we’re actually litigating in court—no matter what they find in this study, that decision in 2023 by the FDA was still unlawful.”
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said she trusts Dr. Heidi Overton, Trump’s nominee for FDA commissioner, who said there will be communication about the comprehensiveness of the study.
“That study has to be done in the most durable, scientific way possible and the results communicated transparently,” Overton said in her Senate confirmation hearing.
Dannelfelser told the Daily Signal it’s frustrating the pro-life movement has been left with so little information about the long-awaited review.
‘The fact that we’re all waiting on pins and needles for a report on a study that should have been a long time ago,” she said, “and there should have already been a Justice Department settling with the state of Louisiana over this, just is evidence of high levels of frustration.”
Even without the abortion pill safety review, the Trump administration could have restored the in-person dispensing requirement on the abortion pill, and pro-lifers are disillusioned that this hasn’t happened, Dannenfelser said.
“It could have reestablished the REMS that were surrounding the distribution of the drug under the first Trump administration,” she said. “We could have reestablished the Trump rules at any point along the way, but that did not happen, and so now we’re, you know, looking for any glimmer of hope that we’re heading in the right direction today.”
The pro-life leader does not think this disappointment will hurt Republicans in midterms because of the strong pro-life record of candidates.
“We have very strong candidates,” she said. “They are the ones running in Senate battlegrounds, in House battlegrounds for governorships, and those candidates themselves are solid. They are completely with us in our estimation of how important this particular issue is on abortion drugs.”
The FDA and HHS did not respond to the Daily Signal’s request for comment.
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
