Following the Trump administration’s announcement last week that it would not submit a long-awaited report on the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone until March 2027, experts are expressing outrage over the unexplained delay as the disastrous health effects of the unregulated drug on women and babies continue to escalate.

On October 7, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a court document stating that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) would not complete its safety review of mifepristone until March of next year, almost a year and a half after the Trump administration first announced that it would complete a review of the drug following widespread reports of women experiencing serious adverse events after ingesting it.

The development comes amid an ongoing crisis that has enveloped the country in the wake of the Biden administration’s decision in 2021 to remove the in-person dispensing requirement for the drug, which has led to the number of abortions doubling in the U.S. as dozens of mifepristone dispensaries ship the pill across state lines in violation of pro-life state laws, often without ID verification of the woman or verification of gestational age of the baby. This has led to an escalating number of women experiencing excruciating side effects that often lead to ER visits, as well as numerous cases of women being forced into taking the drug against their will after men have fraudulently obtained the pills.

Despite the spiraling public health crisis, the Trump administration has so far taken no action to reinstate the mifepristone in-person dispensing safety protocols since taking office in January 2025, which were in place even during the Obama administration to ensure that the unborn child was not past the 10-week gestational limit and to ensure that the pregnancy was not ectopic (which could lead to severe complications including death). Despite sustained pressure from health experts and pro-life advocates for the previously pro-life administration to reverse course, all that has been promised is a safety review of the drug.

Health experts like Dr. Christina Francis, who serves as CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists (AAPLOG), are expressing deep concerns over how the safety review is being conducted.

“Those of us who have been waiting for this update from the FDA have real concerns based on the report that was filed yesterday,” she emphasized during “Washington Watch” Friday. “We’re concerned because of the length of time that this study has taken. … [I]t was over a year ago, almost a year and a half ago now, that we were told that this study was happening. I don’t know of any other study like this that would take that long to do, especially since they’re saying data is not going to be available until December, and then the report not until three months later.”

“But the other real concern is the one data source that they cited in the report — which is a very incomplete data source — the Sentinel data set only includes insurance claims data from a few insurance providers,” Francis continued. “And if you look at the Sentinel’s own website, the amount of data that they have after 2021 drops dramatically because they don’t have Medicaid data from those years. Why is that important in this issue? Well, because it was 2021 when the FDA removed that in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, which is what allowed it to become available through the mail. It’s after that that we know that the rate of complications started to increase dramatically. And yet it appears that they’re not even looking at the right data to be able to pull those complications.”

According to estimates from the FDA and confirmed by mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories, approximately 7.5 million women have undergone chemical abortions between 2000 (when the drug became legal in the U.S.) and 2024, three years after the Biden administration ended the in-person dispensing requirement. According to estimates from the Guttmacher Institute, roughly 730,000 chemical abortions were carried out in 2025 alone (accounting for about 65% of all abortions committed that year).

Francis further contended that the Trump administration is refusing to take action on regulating mifepristone for political reasons, with widespread reports that administration officials like Susie Wiles are pushing Attorney General Todd Blanche to slow walk abortion pill regulations until after the midterm elections out of fear that the issue could scare off Independent and moderate voters from voting Republican.

“I think it’s completely dependent on how long they want to play political games to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement,” she observed. “They have all the packaging, all the wording that they need to do that, because that was the sort of status quo before 2021. They could immediately go back to that. And in fact, APPLOG has led a letter from multiple medical organizations now three different times to the FDA outlining the safeguards that they need to put back in place and why they need to put that in-person dispensing requirement back in place. … They have had years now to prepare for this, and so my hope would be that that would happen immediately. … And then the additional safeguards are even potentially looking at removing it from the market. That could take some more time, but they need to be seriously considering that if they care about the women and the children of this country.”

Francis went on to lament how abortion rights in America have been used as a cudgel to overshadow any concerns about the health and safety of women and babies.

“There have been multiple drugs that have been removed from the market for far lower complication rates than we know mifepristone has,” she pointed out. “This is the classic example of the abortion distortion, which is where access to abortion is prioritized over everything else, including the health and safety of women and girls across this country. You know, we did an exposé video with AAPLOG that showed that I was able, as a supposedly a 13-year-old girl in the state of Indiana — where abortion is illegal — to get online and order these drugs despite having multiple medical risks. This is not health care. It is irresponsible, and the FDA really has neglected its duty to the American public.”