WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Pro-life leaders are sharply criticizing the Trump Food & Drug Administration (FDA) following a report alleging that FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is intentionally “slow walking” a review of abortion pill safety data until after next year’s midterm elections, which Makary denies.

Since returning to office, President Donald Trump has taken a number of pro-life actions primarily in the area of taxpayer funding, but concern has brewed among pro-lifers ever since he declared (amid a broader effort to soften the Republican Party’s pro-life plank) that President Donald Trump would not enforce a federal law banning abortion pills from being dispensed by mail, continuing a Biden administration policy that undermines state pro-life laws.

Pro-lifers were given hope in May that the White House’s position might change when U.S. Health & Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (another formerly pro-abortion figure who “moderated” during his own presidential bid) promised in May a “complete review” of the medical risks of abortion pills, though no conclusions or timetable have since been announced.

On Tuesday, Bloomberg reported that the reason for that is, allegedly, “behind the scenes, Makary has told agency officials to delay the safety review” until “after the midterm elections,” according to unnamed “people familiar with the discussions.” In response to congressional inquiries about the agency’s silence, the FDA has repeatedly assured them the review is ongoing.

Makary responded to the accusation in an interview with the Daily Signal, lamenting that “we live in a very partisan time, and so you’re going to see the echo chambers of social media sort of magnify rumors, things that are just not true. There has been an ongoing review of mifepristone.” 

“Part of a robust study is data acquisition,” Makary explained. “And so, we’re in that data acquisition phase to get the right data to be able to do this study.” 

Makary said he is unable to predict the “results or the timeframe” of the review, because the “shutdown was a little bit of a setback in that, but we’re gonna do it and whenever the results are available, we’re gonna make them public” after fully performing the process of repeating and validating the findings.

“These are all routine steps in robust data analysis,” he said. “Studies are often repeated, done by multiple reviewers or statisticians. So, we’re going to do it the right way. And look, I know there are a lot of voices in this space, but I’m committed to doing this the right way.”

But several pro-life leaders have decided enough is enough. Live Action founder Lila Rose said that “If Dr Makary will not act as head of the FDA to protect children and mothers he should be fired.” The American Association of Pro Life OBGYNs suggested the FDA had not lived up to its promise, and demanded “No more empty promises.”

U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) took the report to mean that the “FDA lied to me and other members of Congress & is not actively reviewing the chemical abortion drug at all. FDA needs to stop dithering & reinstate the mifepristone safety guardrails. Nothing less is acceptable.” The next day, he wrote a letter to Makary demanding answers and contending that the “ongoing review of mifepristone” as part of the REMS process is not the “new and comprehensive study” he originally promised.

Following the Bloomberg report, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser went so far as to declare that Makary “should be fired immediately,” claiming he is “severely undermining President Trump and Vice President Vance’s pro-life credentials and their position that states should have the right to enact and enforce pro-life protections” (it is unknown what, if any, role the White House played in the alleged delay order, but not wanting the findings to impact the midterms would more likely be of concern to elected officeholders and party leaders than appointed health administrators).

SBA did not find Makary’s explanation to the Daily Signal satisfactory, responding that the “reality is far worse” than mere “social media rumors,” noting he “refused to say it’s unsafe to take abortion drugs at home without seeing a doctor in person, even based on what’s already known” and that the FDA “should reinstate in-person doctor visits TODAY.” It concluded, “We repeat: Makary must go.”

Even before this week’s allegation, many pro-lifers said that there was already more than enough data to at least undo the Biden rule changes, at minimum.

A November 20 letter, led by Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN) and addressed to Kennedy and Makary, asked that the “deleterious and grossly underreported effects on women of the drug mifepristone be aggressively investigated and decisive action taken to protect women from harm” and urges “immediate action be taken to, at a minimum, reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.”

It highlighted an April analysis by the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC), which concluded that almost 11 percent of women suffer sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging, or other major conditions after taking mifepristone, according to insurance data, plus similar findings by the Restoration of America Foundation, as part of a “growing body of evidence indicating that the health risks associated with mifepristone abortions are severe, widespread, and significantly underreported.”

Abortion pills have become arguably the most important part of the abortion lobby’s business, and the ability to mail them across state lines to be taken in complete privacy is nearly impossible for pro-life states to prevent, effectively undermining Trump’s own stated desire for every state to decide abortion policy for itself.

In November 2022, Operation Rescue reported that a net decrease of 36 abortion facilities in 2022 led to the lowest number in almost 50 years, yet the chemical abortion business “surged” with 64 percent of new facilities built that year specializing in dispensing mifepristone and misoprostol. Citing data from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, STAT says mifepristone “accounts for roughly half of all abortions in the U.S.” 

Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s most recent annual report revealed that, almost two years after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed direct abortion bans to be enforced for the first time in half a century, the nation’s largest abortion chain still operates almost 600 facilities nationwide, through which it committed 392,715 in the most recent reporting period. According to the Lozier Institute’s Prof. Michael New, that is a “record number of abortions for the organization and represents approximately 40 percent of the abortions performed in the United States.”