Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told senators at his nomination hearing to lead the Health and Human Services Department that President Donald Trump told him to “study” the safety of mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill.
GOP Sen. Steve Daines asked Kennedy if he would commit to reviewing the Food and Drug Administration’s actions that lifted restrictions on abortion pills, which included removing in-person dispensing requirements and making them available by mail — actions that Republicans and anti-abortion advocates oppose.
“President Trump has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone. He has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it. Whatever he does, I will implement those policies and I will work with this committee [to] make those policies make sense,” Kennedy said.
The nominee met with several senators for weeks ahead of his hearing. Sen. Josh Hawley, a staunch ally of the anti-abortion movement, previously told NOTUS that Kennedy said he was “open” to making the pill only accessible in person, thereby severely limiting its availability.
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Mifepristone is endorsed and considered safe and effective by major medical organizations, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Trump has previously said he does not want to “block” access to abortion pills, although he has never specifically stated whether he believes previous FDA restrictions should be reinstated.
Daines’ questioning also focused on the FDA’s removal of the requirement that doctors must report “serious adverse events,” which the agency said are “rare.” Health providers are only currently required to report deaths of patients who have taken mifepristone. (The FDA has reported 36 deaths since the drug was approved in 2000, although it says that the deaths cannot be directly attributed to the pill.)
Daines expressed concerns over the pill’s label which says that emergency room visits can occur. ER visits themselves are not considered by health providers, or the FDA, as serious adverse events. The pill is usually taken in conjunction with misoprostol up to 10 weeks of pregnancy and accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S.
Kennedy said that removal of the initial reporting requirement was “immoral.”
Kennedy has changed his stance on abortion multiple times. Ultimately, on his failed third-party presidential run, he said he supported Roe v. Wade protections on abortion and that decisions on the procedure should be left to the woman. But on Wednesday, after several senators asked him about his opinion, he said he agreed with Trump’s belief that it should be left to the states.
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Oriana González is a reporter at NOTUS.
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