General Discussion

Physicians and health care experts say abortion medication is safe and effective. Studies show that 99.6% of pregnancies are successfully terminated with abortion pills if taken nine weeks into gestation, and that the risk of major complications sits at less than 1%.

Hawley cited a 2025 study from conservative think tank the Ethics and Public Policy Center, which found among 865,000 insurance claims for mifepristone abortions, around 11% of women reported a “serious adverse event” related to the procedure. But a Washington Post analysis at the time found the study was not peer reviewed and lacked transparency in its dataset — and that researchers used an expansive definition of “serious event” when categorizing adverse cases.