'Can men get pregnant?' GOP portrays Democrats' witness at abortion pill hearing as fake scientist

With the Trump administration under fire from pro-life organizations for the Food and Drug Administration's alleged slow-walk of a promised review of an abortion drug's safety – one even demanded Commissioner Marty Makary's firing – Senate Republicans tried to steer the blame back to familiar territory: prior Democratic presidents.

The Obama and Biden administrations' weakening of mifepristone's regulatory structure, by removing requirements to report non-fatal adverse events, then in-person dispensing after the Supreme Court ended federal abortion rights in Dobbs, was front and center at a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing Wednesday.

The Charlotte Lozier Institute, a pro-life research group akin to the abortion-rights Guttmacher Institute, published new research half an hour before the hearing on a flood of abortion pills into the U.S. coinciding with the Biden FDA's removal of in-person dispensing.

"Unregulated international online pharmacies will ship abortion drugs to all 50 states, and most don’t require prescriptions or consultations before shipping," raising the risk of "forced and coerced abortions" since medical oversight is also missing, the report says.

"Community abortion drug networks often provide loose, unmarked pills and place no gestational limit on how late in pregnancy the drugs may be ordered," raising questions about  "drug quality" and the risk of complications such as "complete abortions," it also says.

GOP senators, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill and board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist Monique Wubbenhorst recited similar dangers and harms from the regulatory change, as Democratic senators and Physicians for Reproductive Health fellow Nisha Verma, another OBGYN, blamed post-Dobbs abortion restrictions for any harm.

The hearing went off-subject occasionally. Vaccine-cheerleading pharma favorite Chairman Bill Cassidy, R-La., contrasted reporting requirements for a post-inoculation "sore arm" with none for non-fatal mifepristone incidents, and two Republicans seized on Verma's adherence to gender ideology to discredit her bona fides as a doctor and scientist.

After tearfully recounting cases she prosecuted and heard as a judge involving abortion pills administered by deception or coercion, Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Fla., asked Verma out of nowhere "can men get pregnant?" When Verma paused, Murrill and Wubbenhorst each answered no and told Moody there's no justification for prescribing the pills to men.

Verma distinguished between the women and "people with different identities" she treats when Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., repeatedly asked her whether men can get pregnant.

"Yes-no answers are a political tool," she answered when Hawley said he was trying to establish "biological reality" and noted the Supreme Court just heard two cases on the meaning of "sex."

It was the second consecutive day of such a showdown, with Justice Samuel Alito going viral Tuesday for asking a plaintiff's lawyer, in a challenge to Idaho's law banning males from girls' sports, how the high court can determine discrimination on the basis of sex if the lawyer can't even define "boy" and "girl."

"I think you're trying to reduce the complexity" and "conflating," Verma said as Hawley interrupted her, apparently distinguishing between "men" as a gender and "males" as a sex. "This isn't hard, doctor," Hawley said: "I don't know how we can take you seriously" as a "person of science" on mifepristone's safety profile, when Verma advances a "political agenda."

What's the objection to reporting adverse events to FDA?

Accusations of ignoring science and women's health in favor of politics flew back and forth between Republicans and Democrats at the hearing, with the former rattling off uncredited statistics on abortion pill complications from peer-reviewed research and the latter dismissing it as "debunked, junk studies," as Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., called it.

Abortion pills are not "safe, run-of-the-mill drugs," Cassidy said, citing research that 1-in-10 women who have taken them describe pain as "moderate to severe" and the same ratio enduring severe adverse events including hemorrhaging and "overwhelming infection," apparently referring to an Ethics and Public Policy Center report last year.

Republicans shared horror stories from women who took mifepristone, such as feeling "sliced up" inside, having to "relearn to walk" following sepsis from fetal remains and unknowingly taking the pills from boyfriends and, one of Moody's cases, an ex's new girlfriend.

"Who could be opposed to making sure that adverse events are reported to the FDA?" Cassidy asked, citing recent polling that 7-in-10 Americans and two-thirds of those identifying as pro-choice support mandatory in-person visits for abortion drugs.

He marveled that some airplane restrooms include signs on reporting human trafficking, but that telehealth prescribing and mailing of pills prevents medical professionals who are "trained to spot abuse" from helping coerced women. 

Cassidy said Makary and Health and Human Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. must "at an absolute minimum" restore in-person safeguards "immediately" and complete the mifepristone safety review. He's hoping to get Makary before the committee "soon," responding to Sen. Jim Banks, R-Ind., who asked why Makary wasn't there to face questions.

Unlike Tylenol, mifepristone harm is from 'routine prescribed use'

Democrats seemed to recite "safe and effective" as if they were talking about COVID-19 vaccines, with Murray also citing more than 160 "high-quality studies" on mifepristone, which she claimed has fewer complications than Viagra, the erection pill. The "sham hearing" is "utter BS," she said, asking why Kennedy hadn't been summoned yet for undermining vaccines.

Ranking member Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, accused Republicans of also withholding miscarriage treatment from women, apparently referring to misoprostol, which is used to evacuate the womb following miscarriage or mifepristone. (Verma said she took the two-drug combination after she lost a pregnancy with her husband last year.)

Louisiana made an "overwhelmingly bipartisan decision" to ban abortion drugs and their facilitation, AG Murrill said, calling the removal of in-person prescribing "a purely political" decision that violated federal law and increased abortions in the Pelican State.

New York Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul is shielding a doctor and clinic from Louisiana justice for mailing pills to a mother with a history of severe abuse, who forced her pregnant daughter to take them and abandoned her, requiring an emergency surgical abortion. 

"The young woman had been planning a gender reveal party," Murrill said. 

"These are not medical professionals and these [pills] are not healthcare," with shield laws like New York's making it harder for victims to sue, Murrill said. Sanders is defending criminals who mail pills with no medical supervision and tell recipients "to lie at the hospital" when they experience complications, she told him.

The so-called junk studies include research from Scandinavian countries, "which are not pro-life," with 1-in-17 women requiring surgical intervention after the pill, Wubbenhorst said. The U.K. treated 10,000 women for complications in 2022-23 and a new Canadian study shows mifepristone "markedly increased the risk" for in-patient psychiatric admission.

Unlike Tylenol during pregnancy, the recent target of President Trump's ire, mifepristone's dangers stem from its "routine prescribed use," not the wrong dosage, Wubbenhorst said. A black woman, she noted oft-ignored racial disparities in abortion, 3-5 times greater among black than white women in some states.

'Filling out a form online with no history taken'

Verma, the Democrats' witness, said she researches abortion restrictions on women with high-risk pregnancies. Mifepristone is "equally safe and effective" prescribed via telehealth and is vital for rural patients and "maternity care deserts," she said, claiming fewer than 10 studies show risks, two of which were retracted.

She also went off-topic, claiming her patients face threats including Medicaid cuts and "widespread misinformation about vaccines" and fear going to the hospital because of their immigration status.

Cassidy appeared to corner Verma on how telehealth is safe for mifepristone, when it only requires "filling out a form online with no history taken" and Verma herself described counseling patients on the drug and its potential side effects before prescribing. 

Verma initially evaded answering whether she would prescribe the pill at 20 weeks' gestation, twice its regulatory limit, as documented in cases by Murrill and others.

Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Miss. and a doctor like Cassidy, challenged Verma's implication that only abortion drugs can treat pregnancy complications such as postpartum hemorrhaging. She refused to admit mifepristone was initially classified in "category X," the riskiest class of drugs, before the Obama administration phased out the letter system.

Wubbenhorst backed Marshall's claim that women typically misjudge their last menstrual cycle by a month, which is why ultrasounds are needed to confirm pregnancy stage, so mifepristone is taken within the 10-week window. 

The pro-abortion American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists also frowns on dating pregnancies without ultrasounds, said Wubbenhorst, who noted she treated a patient who came in for abdominal pain and was unknowingly 23 weeks pregnant.

The failure rate for abortion drugs doubles at 14 weeks (10%) compared to before 10 weeks (5%), and 5% of babies delivered after mifepristone failure have "major fetal malformations" such as missing digits, Marshall said, pressing Verma on when she uses ultrasounds. "I know you're coached," he said when Verma again evaded directly answering.

When the Democrats' witness said she connects patients with ultrasounds when they aren't sure about their last menstrual cycle, Marshall expressed shock that she didn't have an ultrasound in her office. Telehealth prescribing is "below the standard of care," he said: "You're putting women's lives in danger."