Trump’s Trusted Pollster: Even Pro-Aborts Say Mifepristone Is Dangerous And Needs FDA Regulation

By: Mollie Hemingway and Jordan Boyd, originally published October 28, 2025, The Federalist

It is easier now than during the first Trump administration for people, including abusers and traffickers, to obtain harmful abortion pills.

Data collected by President Donald Trump’s trusted pollster suggests a majority of likely voters want the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to protect women from the dangerous drug responsible for  more than half of U.S. abortions.

The August 2025 survey obtained exclusively by The Federalist from McLaughlin and Associates, the pollster President Donald Trump  once referred to  as “one of the most highly respected in the industry,” concluded the sample of voters, even though a majority of them claim to hold pro-abortion views, overwhelmingly believe mifepristone is dangerous and requires further FDA oversight.

More specifically, a majority of the 1,600 likely voters surveyed appeared to welcome restoring the abortion drug guidelines that were designed to protect women from injury and abuse but were ultimately weakened and stripped by recent Democrat administrations.

Voters Consider Abortion Pills Unsafe

A majority — 59 percent — of respondents said they held a “favorable” view of the nation’s largest abortion business Planned Parenthood. Yet, hesitancy about pill-induced abortion and the harms it has on women extended far beyond the 40 percent of self-proclaimed pro-lifers to include the 57 percent of likely voters who consistently claimed to be pro-abortion.

Despite abortion activists and their allies in the corporate media and the Democrat Party’s best efforts to  paint the pill regimen as “safer than Tylenol,”  only 16 percent of respondents believed the abortion drug to be “very safe.” On the contrary, roughly six in 10 respondents said they believed the mifepristone and misoprostol combination to be “unsafe” or were unsure of its safety.

Increasing uncertainty about chemical abortion across all likely voters was further confirmed when 71 percent of respondents approved of the FDA requiring women to visit the doctor to obtain an abortion drug prescription. Three-in-five voters even went so far as to agree that “chemical abortions are far more dangerous than advertised, and women deserve a doctor’s care to prevent serious health complications like hemorrhaging, bleeding, or infections.”

Approximately seven in 10 of those surveyed, after agreeing that “chemical abortion drugs are used by sexual abusers to cover up rape, exploitation and sex-trafficking,” said doctors should also be required to “screen for and report signs of coercion or abuse” before prescribing mifepristone.

A majority of abortions, 70 percent,  are believed to be unwanted, coerced, or inconsistent  with the mother’s values and desires. The Biden administration’s radical expansion of the Obama administration’s  already questionable abortion pill policies  to allow  mail-order  mifepristone, however, only made it easier for abusers to harm vulnerable women and babies.

When the FDA rushed its approval of the abortion drug in 2000, the pill regimen was only prescribed by a physician after three in-person doctor visits that included an exam to confirm the gestational age of the unborn baby. After taking the drug they obtained in person, women were required to follow up with physicians who were obligated to report any and all serious complications that resulted.

Before President Joe Biden left office, he ensured all of those safeguards were rolled back or modified to make it easier for women to get mifepristone in the mail or through a drug store pharmacy without a doctor visit and initiate at-home abortions without medical oversight.

Not only have countless unborn children been aborted as a result of these expansions, but  women   have  also suffered  injuries and even died   after  taking  mifepristone  without medical supervision. Some of those women, like abortion pill poisoning survivor  Rosalie Markezich, sued after they were drugged with mifepristone against their wills.

In a couple of cases, the perpetrators who allegedly slipped pregnant women abortion drugs were  charged  with  homicide  after the pills not only killed their unborn babies, but also forced the women to seek emergency medical attention for complications.

Approximately 81 percent of poll respondents agreed “no one should be able to get chemical abortion drugs online or from a foreign country and be able to give them to a woman without her knowledge or consent.” For 69 percent of those surveyed, “the number of women experiencing serious, harmful effects from taking chemical abortion drugs has risen dramatically” enough that it only “makes sense” to them that the FDA should restore the protections removed by Biden.

An even higher number of those surveyed, 72 percent, agreed that mifepristone manufacturers have prioritized profit over “women’s health and safety” and “have pressured the FDA to lower the health and safety standards on their chemical abortion drugs to sell more of them.”

A staggering 87 percent supported a mifepristone label change that would “accurately report the real-world impact of the chemical abortion drugs on patients who take it” including “possible harmful side effects and complications of the abortion drug, such as heavy bleeding, sepsis, stomach pains, infections, scarring, pre-term labor in future pregnancies, and depression and mental health issue.”

An Appetite For Reversing Course

The Trump administration has the regulatory power to reverse course and reinstate some of the common-sense abortion pill safeguards, such as an in-person doctor visit, that a majority of likely voters desire. Until that happens, it will remain easier now than it was in the first Trump administration for people, including abusers and traffickers, to obtain abortion pills.

According to the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research (CDER) Office of New Drugs, the risk evaluation and mitigation strategy (REMS) for a particular drug can be modified if the  regulatory agency deems it “necessary,”  especially in light of the  “frequency and severity of adverse events associated with the use of a drug.”

A recent review of private medical insurance data determined that more than one in 10 women who take mifepristone suffer a serious adverse event. Their review of private medical insurance data  suggested  the rate of life-threatening complications such as hemorrhage and infection after pill-induced abortion is at least 22 times higher than what the FDA and mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories boast.

Another study  released in May suggested the number of serious complications that result from abortions could be higher than estimated after researchers found that the number of post-abortion emergency room visits that were misclassified as miscarriages has increased significantly over the last decade.

While the second Trump administration has already capitalized on the momentum that stemmed from the Supreme Court’s 2022  Dobbs v. Jackson  to secure pro-life victories, such as walking back Biden’s attempt to  force taxpayer-funded abortion overseas  and defunding Planned Parenthood for a year, their movement on mifepristone has been slow.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has pledged since before Trump was inaugurated that the administration would  “study the safety of mifepristone.”  By March 2025, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary also  promised  “to build an expert coalition to review the ongoing data which is required to be collected as a part of the REMS program.”

Mounting pressure from Republican attorneys general in September prompted the pair to  announce  “HHS –through the FDA – is conducting its own review of the evidence, including real-world outcomes and evidence, relating to the safety and efficacy of the drug.”

Mere weeks after launching its review, however, the FDA  approved  a generic version of mifepristone for sale. At the time, the FDA claimed to The Federalist that the HHS secretary was required “by law” to “approve an application if it demonstrates that the generic drug is identical to the brand-name drug.” Yet, the off-brand abortion pill went unapproved for 1,207 days on Biden’s watch and 253 days under Trump before the FDA greenlit it.

Voters’ appetite for change heading into the midterm election season is alive and well. In fact, 54 percent of likely voters still think the nation is on the wrong track. Their feelings about abortion, especially the prevalence of abortion pill-induced harm to babies and women, overwhelmingly suggest they want that change in the form of FDA action to protect women and their unborn babies from the harms of mifepristone.

“The majority of Americans believe we need more restrictions on the abortion pill,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo. said in a statement to The Federalist. “Mifepristone is extremely dangerous and even deadly for women, with nearly 11 percent of women who take it experiencing an adverse health event – sometimes serious enough to send them to the emergency room. Not to mention, the drug is 100 percent lethal to the child. It’s time for the FDA to restore common-sense safety standards to the chemical abortion drug immediately.”

Mollie Ziegler Hemingway is the Editor-in-Chief of The Federalist .

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and producer of The Federalist Radio Hour.

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