The Freedom From Religion Foundation pinpoints a recent U.S. Senate hearing on the abortion pill as a textbook example of religious ideology intruding into government decision-making under the guise of public safety.

Although billed as a hearing on the safety of medication abortion, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee proceeding, misleadingly titled “Protecting Women: Exposing the Dangers of Chemical Abortion Drugs,” served primarily as a platform for anti-abortion lawmakers to promote religiously motivated misinformation and pressure federal regulators to abandon evidence-based standards. The result was a parade of junk science, fearmongering and overt attempts to substitute theology for medicine.

The religious motivation behind the hearing was made explicit during a post-hearing press conference, where senators and hearing witnesses stood alongside Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Jason Rapert, founder and president of the National Association of Christian Lawmakers, to demand sweeping executive action against mifepristone. Perkins asserted that the Trump administration could instantly rewrite Food and Drug Administration rules and urged enforcement of the Comstock Act, an 1873 religious morality statute that anti-abortion activists are attempting to resurrect to ban the mailing of abortion medication. The convergence of evangelicals and lawmakers highlighted the extent to which religious pressure groups are seeking to override scientific regulation with sectarian law.

“This hearing had nothing to do with ‘protecting women’ and everything to do with imposing religious doctrine through government power,” says Annie Laurie Gaylor, FFRF co-president. “These lawmakers are discarding overwhelming scientific consensus in favor of phony claims.”

Mifepristone was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000 and has been repeatedly reviewed since. Each review has reached the same conclusion: Medication abortion is safe and effective. Serious adverse events occur in fewer than 1 percent of cases, a rate confirmed by decades of data and endorsed by leading medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Medical Association.

Globally, mifepristone is approved in roughly 100 countries and recommended by the World Health Organization. Medication abortion now accounts for more than 60 percent of abortions nationwide and an even higher percentage in rural areas and states with severe abortion restrictions or bans. Telehealth access and shield laws protecting providers have been critical in ensuring patients can still obtain care.

Medication abortion is safe, effective and essential health care. Efforts to restrict access through false narratives threaten not only reproductive freedom but the integrity of evidence-based policymaking itself. FFRF warns that singling out mifepristone for special scrutiny is not a neutral regulatory choice but a backdoor strategy to set the stage for a ban.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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