(LifeSiteNews) — Serious complications from abortion pills jumped following the Biden administration’s elimination of the requirement to dispense them in physical doctors’ visits, according to new research from the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC).

In December 2021, the Biden administration U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) eliminated the in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills, allowing them to be dispensed by pharmacies with a prescription and sent through the mail. That ramification was shielded by a 2023 determination by the Biden Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel that a provision of the 1873 Comstock Act making it illegal for the United States Postal Service to deliver any “article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing which is advertised or described in a manner calculated to lead another to use or apply it for producing abortion,” did not mean what it said, and abortion pills could be freely mailed, delivered, and received “where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully,” with unlawful intent essentially declared unknowable.

On March 10, EPPC published findings on abortion pill data from January 1, 2017, through December 31, 2023, which covers periods with (Period 1) and without the in-person dispensing requirement (Period 2, with the exception of 3 months with the requirement in effect).

“Our data shows that the rate of serious adverse events for Period 1 was 10.15% and that the rate of serious adverse events for Period 2 was 11.50%—a statistically significant difference of 1.35 percentage points, which is itself roughly triple the ‘less than 0.5 percent’ rate of serious adverse events reported on the drug label,” the report says. “Our data similarly shows that the rate of ectopic pregnancy was 0.27% in Period 1 and 0.41% (52% higher) in Period 2.”

“If remote dispensing of mifepristone accounted for 10% of all prescriptions in Period 2 (which is a reasonable but rough estimate for the entire period, given the information presented above on the increase in remote dispensing from 0% to 30% market share over 3 years), this would imply a rate of serious adverse events of 23.65% for remote dispensing—13.50 percentage points higher than for in-person dispensing,” the report explains. “A serious adverse event would be 2.33 times as likely under remote dispensing as under in-person dispensing, and more than 47 times the ‘less than 0.5 percent’ rate of serious adverse events reported on the drug label. Under this 10% scenario, the provision of mifepristone to a woman with an ectopic pregnancy would be more than six times as likely with remote dispensing as with in-person dispensing.”

“Without requiring an in-person doctor visit, anyone can go online and get mail-order abortion pills,” said EPPC President Ryan Anderson, coauthor of the report. “There is no way to ensure that the unborn baby hasn’t grown so large that chemical abortion is unsafe for the mother, no way to ensure that the unborn baby isn’t implanted outside of the uterus where using chemical abortion drugs could prove deadly to the mother, and no way to ensure that it’s the mother who is voluntarily requesting the chemical abortion drugs and not a boyfriend seeking the pills to secretly and coercively poison her.”

The report adds to a substantial body of evidence about the danger of abortion pills, and how it is heightened when medical oversight is removed. A 2020 open letter from a coalition of pro-life groups to then-FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn noted that the FDA’s own adverse reporting system says the “abortion pill has resulted in over 4,000 reported adverse events since 2000, including 24 maternal deaths. Adverse events are notoriously underreported to the FDA, and as of 2016, the FDA only requires abortion pill manufacturers to report maternal deaths.” A Charlotte Lozier Institute study also found that most emergency room visits stemming from abortion pill complications are misattributed to miscarriages, further making the pills appear safer than they really are.

“A November 2021 study by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology,” writes Catholic University of America research associate Michael New. “They analyzed state Medicaid data of over 400,000 abortions from 17 states that fund elective abortions through their Medicaid programs. They found that the rate of abortion-pill-related emergency-room visits increased over 500 percent from 2002 through 2015. The rate of emergency-room visits for surgical abortions also increased during the same time period, but by a much smaller margin.’”

Last April, another analysis from EPPC concluded that almost 11 percent of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other major conditions after taking mifepristone, according to insurance data. The Restoration of America Foundation also concluded that “more than 1 in 10 women in the U.S. experience a serious adverse event, about 22 times the rate stated to patients by the FDA.”

Despite these dangers, and mail-order abortion pills undermining state pro-life laws, President Donald Trump announced during the 2024 campaign he would not reverse Biden’s rule changes. Pro-lifers were given hope in May 2025 that the White House’s position might change when U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised a “complete review” of the medical risks of abortion pills, though no conclusions or timetable have since been announced, and many pro-lifers have questioned whether the review is being slow-walked.

Last month, a group of senators held a private meeting with FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, after which Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) went so far as to declare, “I just don’t think that that review is even underway.” The FDA claims it is merely taking the time to process and review all the data carefully.