The Anti-Abortion Movement Has to Lie

Another "pro-life" study is retracted, because the movement is fundamentally dishonest. If it told the truth, it would lose.

Last year, a radical Texas judge ruled that the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone should be suspended, and the pill pulled off the market. That case is now going to the Supreme Court, and for now, mifepristone remains available in states where abortion is legal (and abortion pills also make their way into the hands of people in states where abortion isn’t legal). And, just as abortion rights proponents have long said, a core anti-abortion argument — that mifepristone is dangerous, and the FDA overlooked its risks — is based on a lie.

This week, the scientific publisher Sage retracted two studies conducted by abortion opponents that claimed to find that mifepristone posed some health risks, including higher rates of emergency room admissions compared to surgical abortions. After independent experts evaluated the studies, they found “fundamental problems” that "invalidate the authors' conclusions in whole or in part.” The authors’ affiliation with an anti-abortion group, too, was a conflict of interest (duh) and should have been made clear to readers.

Here’s the thing, though: The ridiculousness of these studies, and of the anti-abortion arguments in the mifepristone case, were apparent from the beginning. Mifepristone has been on the market for more than 20 years, and has proven safer than many over-the-counter drugs. Abortion opponents don’t like mifepristone because it’s an abortion pill, not because it’s unsafe. But they’ve used allegations of safety defects as a pretext, because otherwise, they simply do not have a case.