WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Senator Jim Banks (R-Ind.) sent a letter to the Federal Trade Commission Chairman, Andrew Ferguson, urging the Commission to investigate abortion drug companies for allegedly pushing misleading safety claims about their products and engaging in deceptive trade practices that could endanger women’s health.
Read more about the letter here.
Read the full letter here or see below:
Dear Chairman Ferguson:
At a recent event involving deceptive trade practices in gender medicine, you affirmed that the Federal
Trade Commission has jurisdiction over false and misleading medical claims.1 I applaud these statements and ask you to look at possible violations of Section Five of the Federal Trade Commission Act by abortion drug companies.
Abortion drugs are now the most common method of administering an abortion. Nearly two-thirds of abortions involve Mifepristone. The abortion drug regimen, Mifepristone and Misoprostol, is often prescribed online and without the necessary in-person screenings for ectopic pregnancy and other dangerous complications.
The drug is also shipped to women in all fifty states, including states like my home state of Indiana that have limited abortion through the legislative process.
Mifepristone manufacturers and dispensers claim that their products are safe. Many online clinics—including online clinics that ship to women in Indiana—explicitly state on their websites that abortion drugs are safer than Tylenol. Others claim that abortion drugs almost never cause serious complications.
At best, these statements are misleading. There is no scientific basis for the claim that mifepristone is “safer than Tylenol.” Clinics do not rely on controlled studies to make this claim, which the FTC has historically found relevant when evaluating whether health companies engaged in deceptive trade practices. Indeed, no controlled study has ever reached such a conclusion.
Emerging evidence indicates that abortion drugs are more dangerous than manufacturers and dispensers claim and cause serious medical complications in a concerning number of cases. A post-market study conducted by the Ethics and Public Policy Center found that over ten percent of women experienced serious adverse effects, including sepsis and hemorrhaging, after taking mifepristone. Another study from the Restoration of America Foundation reached the same conclusion.
It is certainly not the case that ten percent of people suffer hemorrhaging after taking Tylenol. The death of Amber Thurman, who died in 2024 due to complications from mifepristone, illustrates the true dangers of abortion drugs.
Abortion drug companies mislead pregnant women in a second way, by coaching them to lie to hospital staff in the event of a complication. According to various clinics, women who receive emergency treatment following a chemical abortion can get the care they need without mentioning the abortion.11
Some clinics even claim that the treatment for chemical abortion complications is the same as the treatment for miscarriage.
These statements are also not backed by reliable scientific evidence and diverge from what the evidence actually shows, which is that abortion complications require unique treatment and that miscoding complications from a chemical abortion can correlate with further complications.
The FTC can put an end to this. Federal law bans deceptive trade acts or practices, long interpreted by the Federal Trade Commission to include acts and practices—including in marketing—that are likely to reasonably mislead consumers to their detriment. Consistent with these prohibitions, the FTC can investigate drug companies that make false or misleading claims about their products. Mifepristone manufacturers and dispensers continue to mislead pregnant women into thinking that abortion drugs are much safer than they really are, and that even if something bad does happen, they can receive appropriate treatment without disclosing their abortion.
Companies that profit from abortion drugs should be honest about their risks. I appreciate all that the FTC is doing to monitor organizations that use public health as a guise to promote dangerous procedures and drug regimes.
The FTC has the tools in its toolbox to hold abortion drug companies to their obligations under consumer protection law. I encourage you to act swiftly and without delay.
Thank you for your attention to this important matter.
