During a recent U.S. Senate committee hearing, Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted spoke against the abortion pill, a target of the Trump administration as well as legislation at the Ohio Statehouse.
The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee held a hearing on “protecting women against dangerous abortion drugs,” in which the attorney general for Louisiana and other speakers spoke in favor of further regulations and FDA scrutiny for the abortion pill mifepristone.
It comes amid a re-review of the drug requested by U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., back in September 2025.
The chair of the committee, Louisiana Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, specifically said the hearing was convened to hear testimony on “dangerous chemicals abortion drugs,” despite the fact that decades of research and some testimony at the same hearing have shown mifepristone to be medically safe and severe complications to be rare.
“Scientifically and morally, there is no difference in the value of a child, whether she is in her mother’s arms or she is in her mother’s womb,” Cassidy said during the hearing.
Husted sits on the committee and participated in the hearing on mifepristone.
He gave two examples in which men are accused of forcing women to take medication abortion without their knowledge or against their will as argument against the drug. He said requiring an in-person visit before dispensing the drug “would stop this.”
Husted also pointed to his own adoption story, in which he said his mother could have chosen abortion.
“Thankfully for me, she didn’t,” Husted said.
An OB/GYN and fellow for Physicians for Reproductive Health, Dr. Nisha Verma, pointed to more than 100 “high quality, peer-reviewed studies” that prove mifepristone’s safety and effectiveness, surpassing the fewer than 10 studies suggesting that the drug is not safe.
One study that is often cited by anti-abortion Republicans was a “policy paper that was self-published,” Verma told the committee, and included “routine care” as serious adverse events.
She said the science “is more than settled” on the safety of the abortion method, “which really does beg the question of what are we doing here today.”
“And it may be that we are here today because people in this room feel uncomfortable with abortion, and that’s okay, and we can talk about that,” Verma said. “But we should not pretend that this is an issue of the science.”
The American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists has said the complication or death risk from an abortion procedure “is less than the same risk from common procedures like wisdom tooth removal, cancer-screening colonoscopy, and plastic surgery.”
Advocates in Ohio further insisted on the safety of the treatment, and said in-person requirements would create an accessibility problem for health care.
“Telehealth and mail-delivery options for medication abortion are particularly crucial for patients living in rural areas, patients with child care or other caretaking responsibilities, or patients with transportation challenges,” said Erica Wilson-Domer, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio.
On Husted’s examples of men forcing mifepristone on unknowing or unwilling women, Wilson-Domer said those “are criminal acts, not a result of the drug’s accessibility.”
“The isolated anecdotes that Sen. Husted bases his argument on should not be used to justify restricting this extremely safe and effective medication,” Wilson-Domer said in a statement.
The FDA first approved mifepristone in 2000, and has since updated its regulation of the drug to allow telemedicine methods.
What remains in place for the drug is a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy, an FDA drug safety program used for several medications to verify distributors of the drug are properly authorized to do so and “ensure the benefits of the medication outweigh its risks,” according to the FDA’s website on the programs.
Ohio’s General Assembly is considering its own moves connected to medication abortion, with Republican-led legislation active in committees.
This includes bills such as Ohio House Bill 324, a general drug regulation bill that would require in-person prescription and ban telehealth options for drugs with severe adverse effects occurring in more than 5% of patients.
Mifepristone came up during hearings for the bill, because abortion advocates argued non-peer-reviewed studies like the one mentioned in the U.S. Senate hearing could be reported to the Ohio Department of Health as reasoning to categorize the medication abortion drug as one in need of in-person requirements.
Anti-abortion groups claimed the bill would provide “necessary safeguards” for mifepristone.
Other bills still up for consideration include Ohio House Bill 370, which would bring back the concept of “fetal personhood” to effectively ban abortion at conception; and Ohio House Bill 347, which would force patients to wait 24 hours before having an abortion, potentially returning to law a requirement paused by an Ohio court.
Ohio Senate Bill 309 would require prescribers of mifepristone to inform patients that they can sue the physician, the health care facilities, and others should complications arise from the drugs.
Physicians and abortion rights advocates have said not only does the law duplicate informed consent requirements already included in their medical training, but it could bring about mistrust between doctors and patients.
Originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal. Republished here with permission.