Martin Makary, the head of the Food and Drug Administration, is under fire from both ends of the ideological spectrum for reportedly pushing back the highly contested safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone.
A handful of national anti-abortion organizations called for the commissioner to be fired this week in the wake of a bombshell report from Bloomberg News. Makary is slow-walking an assessment of mifepristone until after the 2026 midterm elections, the outlet reported Monday, citing people familiar with the review.
Following a pressure campaign from anti-abortion groups, Makary and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in June that they would conduct a new assessment of mifepristone despite the drug’s 25-year safety record.
Those same anti-abortion groups are now deeply upset that the review is reportedly being delayed. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, one of the largest anti-abortion groups in the country, called for Makary to be fired.
“Enough is enough: FDA Commissioner Makary should be fired immediately,” Dannenfelser said in a statement. “…Commissioner Makary is severely undermining President Trump and Vice President Vance’s pro-life credentials and their position that states should have the right to enact and enforce pro-life protections. Makary must go.”
Former Vice President Mike Pence, a devout anti-abortion leader, also demanded Makary be fired in a social media post published Wednesday. “For Women’s Safety, For the Unborn and For the Right to Life, it’s Time to Fire FDA’s Makary,” Pence wrote.
Lila Rose, president of the national anti-abortion organization Live Action, called for Makary to step down, writing on social media that if he “will not act as head of the FDA to protect children and mothers he should be fired.”
An HHS spokesperson told Bloomberg that the “assertions that the FDA is slow walking this review for political purposes are baseless.” Neither HHS nor the FDA immediately responded to HuffPost’s request for comment.
The White House defended Makary in a statement to HuffPost. “FDA Commissioner Marty Makary is working diligently to ensure that Americans have the best possible, Gold Standard Science study of mifepristone,” White House spokesperson Kush Desai told HuffPost.
“The White House maintains the utmost confidence in Commissioner Makary, whose leadership at the FDA has delivered and continues to deliver one landmark victory for the American people after another… Uninformed attacks against Commissioner Makary from individuals outside the Administration will not change these facts.”
Marc Short, a political adviser and former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, called for Kennedy to resign, saying “accountability starts at the top” and claiming he “lied to the pro-life movement.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who has consistently and very publicly pushed HHS to review mifepristone, sent a letter to Makary on Wednesday urging him to answer specific questions on the timeline of the review.
“It is unclear whether you are conducting an independent safety review at all,” Hawley wrote in the letter. “This is totally unacceptable. I cannot emphasize enough the danger of playing politics with women’s health.”
The irony of Hawley’s statement is hard to overlook. The decision to review mifepristone was built in large part around a junk science report published by an anti-abortion think tank. The think tank is an advisory board member of Project 2025 – an extreme right-wing policy agenda that details how to ban abortion nationwide, including by restricting or banning mifepristone with the help of Trump appointees in the FDA.
If true, the report that Makary is delaying the mifepristone review until after the midterm elections is pretty damning evidence that the entire safety review itself is politically motivated. Republicans know that restricting abortion access is generally unpopular across the country, including in many red states, and restricting access to the abortion pill is likely to hurt their chances in the midterms.
The junk science report claims to be the “largest-known study of the abortion pill” and concludes that mifepristone has a higher percentage of adverse events than past studies have found. But research scientists previously told HuffPost that the paper cannot be defined as a scientific study because it was not peer-reviewed and did not include its dataset — an unusual decision that makes it impossible for other researchers to fully assess the methodology and integrity of the results.
The Center for Reproductive Rights sued the Trump administration in September, arguing that the timeline of events leading up to Makary’s decision to review mifepristone “suggests political interference.” The administration’s apparent reliance on the junk science report rather than dozens of long-standing peer-reviewed studies on mifepristone “suggests that anti-abortion ideology is dictating the drug regulation process,” said Rachana Desai Martin, CRR’s chief U.S. program officer.
Years of research show that mifepristone is extremely safe and effective when used in a two-drug regimen with another medication called misoprostol. When used together, mifepristone and misoprostol are more than 95% effective and safer than Tylenol. Major medical groups, including the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have repeatedly said that mifepristone is safe and should be accessible to patients nationwide.
“Mifepristone is safe and effective. Period. We know it, and the FDA knows it,” Planned Parenthood President and CEO Alexis McGill Johnson said in a Wednesday statement. “From the start, a review of mifepristone is exactly what we’ve come to expect from an administration trying to make it harder for everyone, everywhere to get health care, including abortion, when they need it.”
“Their opposition to mifepristone isn’t rooted in science, but in their desire to strip people of their ability to make their own decisions about their bodies, lives, and futures.”
This article has been updated to include former Vice President Mike Pence’s comments.