As the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approaches its court-ordered October 7 deadline to provide an update on its abortion drug study, SBA Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser issued the following statement:

“In her Senate testimony, Dr. Heidi Overton committed to conduct an abortion drug study in ‘the most durable, scientific way possible.’ That echoes Secretary Kennedy’s commitment to producing research ‘grounded in Gold Standard Science and rigorous, transparent, and objective evidence.’

“But a truly rigorous study must draw on all relevant available evidence, including commercially available data analyzed and publicly released in April 2025 by the Ethics and Public Policy Center and the Restoration of America Foundation. It should also incorporate Medicaid data collected after the removal of the in-person dispensing requirement. As the FDA has stated on its website, since April 2026 it has been working to ‘[continue] to work on the collection of the robust and timely data that is necessary for a well-controlled study with adequate statistical power.’

“The FDA’s court-ordered October 7 update on its study should ensure that the eventual analysis is truly robust and incorporates all relevant evidence, including commercially available datasets and post-policy Medicaid data. But the administration should not wait for the study’s completion to act. Given that the Biden administration relied on insufficient evidence and flawed assumptions in removing the in-person dispensing requirement, the FDA should restore that safeguard immediately. And it can do so by settling its litigation against Louisiana.”