Abortion opponents hope a new report will spur the GOP to ban abortion pills and defund Planned Parenthood.
The nation’s most influential anti-abortion groups have a new plan to roll back access to the procedure for millions of Americans in what they’re calling the “biggest opportunity for the pro-life movement” since toppling Roe v. Wade.
The effort, which the groups have privately named “Rolling Thunder,” is the movement’s first concerted attempt under the second Trump administration to target abortion pills, and aims to convince the FDA, Congress and courts to crack down on their use.
While the Trump administration paid little attention to the medication in its first months in office, and even filed a court brief to preserve access, the activists are counting on a report from the conservative think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center to light a fire under those in power.
The paper, published last week, purports to show significantly more patients have experienced serious side effects after taking mifepristone than previously known. Medical experts and abortion-right supporters say it exaggerates the danger of a medication that more than 100 scientific studies have found are safe and effective.
Planned Parenthood and other abortion-rights supporters are slamming the report as “junk science” as they mount their own pressure campaign to save their funding — highlighting that the paper was released directly by the conservative think tank and not published in a medical journal where it would have been vetted by outside experts in the peer review process.
Dr. Christina Francis, the CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life OBGYNs and member of the coalition of conservative doctors that challenged the 25-year-old FDA approval of the pills, also warned the groups not to misrepresent the paper, noting that is is “not a study in the traditional sense” and “not conclusive proof of anything.”