Investigation Reveals Abortion Pill Sellers Putting Women’s Lives and Health at Risk

National Right to Life today praised Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-La.) and Senators Steve Daines (R-Mont.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), and the late Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) for their investigation into the manufacturers of mifepristone and the companies’ failure to provide meaningful oversight of the drug’s distribution and prescription.

The committee’s report, Mifepristone Without Guardrails: An Investigation into How Chemical Abortion Drug Makers Are Putting Mothers and Babies at Risk, examines the operations of Danco Laboratories, GenBioPro, and Evita Solutions—the three companies approved by the Food and Drug Administration to market mifepristone for abortion.

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“This report exposes an abortion-pill system built on secrecy, self-policing, and astonishingly little accountability,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “Chairman Cassidy and his colleagues have performed an invaluable public service by demanding answers from companies that profit from the deaths of unborn children while failing to adequately account for the women harmed by their products.”

The committee found that the manufacturers could not identify meaningful steps they take to ensure that online prescribers comply with the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy requirements. Danco and GenBioPro acknowledged that they have never decertified a single prescriber, despite the rapid growth of mail-order abortion and evidence that abortion pills that they provide are being prescribed through websites with little medical evaluation or ongoing oversight.

The report also reveals serious deficiencies in the reporting of abortion-pill complications. Before the FDA eliminated mandatory reporting of non-fatal adverse events in 2016, approximately 4,000 such events involving Danco’s Mifeprex had been reported. During the following decade, Danco reported only about 150 non-fatal adverse events—even as the use of chemical abortion increased dramatically.

There is no medical or logical reason why all these complications suddenly disappeared. Nothing was done that made the abortion pill safer.

“An absence of reports is not evidence of an absence of injuries—especially when the reporting requirement itself has been removed,” said Tobias. “The committee’s investigation demonstrates how little the FDA, abortion-pill manufacturers, and the public may actually know about the complications women experience.”

According to the report, online prescriptions accounted for an estimated 28 percent of all U.S. abortions in 2025—approximately 300,000 abortions—compared with seven percent in 2022. Women may now obtain abortion pills without an in-person examination, receive them through the mail, and undergo the abortion far away from the person who prescribed the drugs.

The committee’s findings underscore the need for National Right to Life’s model legislation, the Abortion Pill Provider Liability and Education Act, or APPLE Act.

The APPLE Act requires women to receive truthful information about the risks associated with abortion-inducing drugs and clear notice of their legal rights if they are harmed. It requires the reporting of complications and allows women and their families to hold manufacturers, distributors, prescribers, facilitators, and health-care facilities financially accountable for injuries, trauma, or death caused by abortion pills.

“The committee has documented the accountability gap. The APPLE Act gives states a practical way to begin closing it,” said Tobias. “When abortion-pill manufacturers and prescribers fail to disclose risks, ignore safeguards, or abandon women suffering complications, they should not be insulated from responsibility.”

The APPLE Act also assures women that seeking emergency medical treatment following an abortion-pill complication will not expose them to criminal charges. The legislation places responsibility where it belongs: on those who manufacture, distribute, prescribe, facilitate, and profit from abortion-inducing drugs—not on the women who may arrive at emergency rooms bleeding, frightened, and in need of care.

“The abortion industry has built a system in which pills can be prescribed online, shipped across state lines, and taken without medical oversight,” said Tobias. “Yet when a woman suffers hemorrhage, infection, an incomplete abortion, or another serious complication, the prescriber may be hundreds of miles away.”

Tobias continued, “Women deserve more than a website, a package in the mail, and instructions to go to the emergency room if something goes wrong.”

National Right to Life urges state lawmakers to enact the APPLE Act to provide women and their families with truthful information, transparency, and legal recourse.

The full HELP Committee report can be found here.