Josh Hawley Hopes Terribly Conducted Study Will Help Him Ban Abortion Meds
He cares so deeply about women!
For the past week or so, anti-abortion lunatics have been positively drooling over a new “study” they claim proves that the abortion medication Mifeprex is terribly unsafe and leads to “serious adverse events” in over 10 percent of cases. It’s like a dream come true for them, really. It’s also been a dream come true for Senator Josh Hawley, who introduced legislation on Tuesday titled the Restoring Safeguards for Dangerous Abortion Drugs Act.
“I’m introducing the Restoring Safeguards for Dangerous Abortion Drugs Act after a bombshell study revealed the truth about mifepristone: it’s dangerous,” Hawley said in a statement. “The data shows 1 in 10 women who take mifepristone experience adverse health effects, like going to the ER or suffering from sepsis. The FDA needs to act to protect women now.”
Clearly, Josh Hawley, who has an A+ rating from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and whose wife, Erin Hawley, helped argue the Dobbs case that overturned the constitutional right to abortion, just happens to also care about the lives and health of women in a way completely separate from that. These are definitely two very different issues for him.
The law, specifically, would
Direct the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to restore safeguards for mifepristone that were removed by the Obama and Biden Administrations;
Allow women, who have been harmed by the drug, the right to sue tele-health providers and others that illegally mail the drug; and
Ban foreign companies from mailing and importing mifepristone into the US
The “safeguards” were removed because they were unnecessary, not because no one cared if the drugs were safe or not.
The study Hawley is referring to was published by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC), a conservative think tank, and “conducted” not by scientists or doctors but by its president, Ryan T. Anderson, and its Director of Data Analysis and Unfortunate Haircuts, Jamie Bryan Hall (pictured below).
Previously, Hall was a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, working on undermining Medicare For All with his not-very-good research skills. Because of course he was.
It should come as no great shock that there is a whole lot wrong with this study as well, which they say is the “largest-known study of the abortion pill […] based on analysis of data from an all-payer insurance claims database that includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 to 2023.”
Anderson and Hall claim to have found that “10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or another serious adverse event within 45 days following a mifepristone abortion” and that “the real-world rate of serious adverse events following mifepristone abortions is at least 22 times as high as the summary figure of “less than 0.5 percent” in clinical trials reported on the drug label.”
Woah if true, right? Luckily, not true.
According to the study, which is not peer-reviewed, 94,605 of the 865,727 women experienced these “serious adverse events” up to 45 days after taking mifepristone.
Also, what they consider “serious adverse events” are not actually “serious adverse events.” 28,658 of the 94,605 “serious adverse events” were labeled simply as “hemorrhage” … for a drug that induces a miscarriage, which often results in bleeding. Thus, it would only be a “serious adverse event” if the patient required a transfusion, which the study notes that only 0.15 percent of patients did needed. Otherwise, the bleeding was within the normal range of what you would expect … for a drug that induces a miscarriage.
Nearly half of the “serious adverse events” — 40,960 — were simply visits to the emergency room, which, in and of itself are not considered “serious adverse events.” Mind you, they tracked “adverse events” up to 45 days after the abortion, so while they claim they only counted adverse events specifically related to a medication abortion, they could actually be anything.
49,169 are listed merely as “other abortion-specific complications,” which could be pretty much anything. They cite “codes specifically related to an abortion or miscarriage, as well as life-threatening mental health diagnoses.” So if someone were to attempt suicide within 45 days of having an abortion, that would be considered a “serious adverse event” related to the abortion.
“Let’s say you go see your doctor for anxiety or insomnia a month after having an abortion,” Jessica Valenti writes at Abortion, Every Day. “Because EPPC is counting any event that happens within 45 days of taking mifepristone — and they’re not defining ‘life-threatening’ — your sleep problem or anxiety could be counted as a ‘serious adverse event’ of abortion pills.”
24,563 of the events were “repeated (surgical) abortion,” which just means the pills did not take and they had to have a surgical abortion instead.
All they did find, really, was that the rate of actual hospitalization for these patients — something that would be pretty necessary for something to be considered a serious adverse event — was 0.55 percent, which is pretty close to the 0.5 percent they claim is far too low.
Importantly, the study also did not take into account if the patients had followed the mifepristone up with misoprostol, as the FDA recommends. Misoprostol increases the likelihood of a complete evacuation, which reduces the risk of complications.
These people do not care about the health and welfare of those trying to terminate their pregnancies — after all, Republican legislators in 11 states have tried or are currently trying to enact legislation meant to charge those who have abortions with homicide — they just want the abortions to end. They want more babies and they want women to get the hell out of the workplace and stay home and take care of those babies. They want sluts who have non-procreative sex to be punished.
They also think people are stupid enough to believe that they actually think these pills are dangerous or would care if they thought they were. If Josh Hawley really is so concerned about the “serious adverse effects” of prescribed medication, perhaps he ought to consider that the risk of death is ten times higher with Viagra than it is with Mifeprex, and get on that one instead.
PREVIOUSLY ON WONKETTE!
Daring choice to go with “The Hitler” hair style.
They know that most cis women of childbearing age bleed regularly, right?
Right?