The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) may have previewed the abortion industry’s next argument against pro-life states like Louisiana that are currently suing the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to stop the influx of illegal mail-order abortion pills across their borders: “Don’t believe your lying eyes.”
Specifically, a four-author study published in JAMA last week prominently claims:
The FDA’s removal of the REMS in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone was associated with a large increase in individuals filling mifepristone prescriptions at pharmacies, almost exclusively through mail order for individuals in states where abortion is legal and telehealth prescribing is permitted.
Abortion proponents will argue that the JAMA study shows the mail-order abortions that do occur are “almost exclusively” perfectly legal. In reality, the authors can credibly report only that those pharmacies that report that they provide mail-order abortion pills claim to do so legally. That’s neither surprising nor newsworthy.
I can credibly report that the JAMA article is, to borrow a phrase, almost exclusively propaganda for the abortion industry. The courts and the FDA would do well to ignore it.
The JAMA study contains two critical flaws:
First, if someone lies to obtain the abortion pill illegally in a pro-life state, the dataset will reflect the lie. Buried in a linked “Supplement 1” rather than in the main text, the authors acknowledge that “individuals from states with a total ban or telehealth restrictions may misrepresent their state of residence to receive a mifepristone prescription.” The woman’s reported state of residence is not merely unreliable; it is likely incorrect precisely when concealing illegal activity, so it is impossible to make a credible claim that the abortion pills included in their dataset were supplied legally.
Second, abortion pills supplied by organizations committed to evading state pro-life laws are unlikely to be included in the dataset. In the very same supplement, the authors report that their insurance dataset “captures data from 92% of retail pharmacies and up to 85% of mail-order pharmacies,” which could lead an uninformed reader to believe they have the vast majority of the relevant data.
But those missing mail-order pharmacies would include, among others, those that prefer not to create a paper trail of their illegal activities. In fact, the pro-abortion Society of Family Planning boasts that about 10,000 abortions per month were provided via telehealth to women in states where this was illegal in 2024. By contrast, the dataset used in the JAMA study includes only about 3,000 mifepristone prescriptions — whether legal or illegal — per month nationwide, clearly only a tiny portion of the relevant data. It is impossible to make a credible claim about the legal provision of abortion pills when those doing so illegally are overwhelmingly excluded from the dataset.
The JAMA study must be exposed before its central false claim gains traction.
Consider Rosalie Markezich, the co-plaintiff in the Louisiana lawsuit, a domestic abuse victim whose boyfriend had a criminal record. She was excited to learn she was pregnant, but he used her personal information without her consent to order abortion drugs online from California. Soon after the pills arrived in the mail, he physically isolated her and angrily coerced her into taking them. Rosalie testifies,
I pleaded with him: “Don’t make me do this.” … If the Biden FDA had not removed in-person dispensing, my then-boyfriend would not have been able to obtain abortion drugs and pressure me to take them against my will.
Rosalie’s case would not be found in the database used for the JAMA study. Nevertheless, she is one of many thousands of women nationwide who have suffered harm due to the FDA’s failure to uphold its duty to ensure the safety, efficacy, and security of mifepristone. The FDA must act swiftly to protect women from this dangerous drug.
