Around the world, millions of women rely on the drug mifepristone for abortion care. That’s put access to the drug in the crosshairs of anti-abortion activists both in the United States and in other countries. Yet as false claims about reproductive health care spread, other countries are offering a compelling alternative to fact checking: storytelling.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided not to block access to the drug via telemedicine for now, while lower court cases play out. But those lower court decisions — and the broader policy debate around the medication — have echoed misinformation and false narratives spread by anti-abortion activists.
For example, the previous Fifth Circuit Court ruling cited “irreparable harm” to the state of Louisiana, noting that the state spent public funds on care for two women “harmed by mifepristone,” and repeated debunked claims that up to 4.6 percent of women taking it require “emergency care.”
Days later, the Iowa State Senate passed a bill banning remote prescription of mifepristone. In the floor debate Sen. Jason Schultz repeatedly called it “poison.” And in March, as U.S. Senators launched a probe to crack down on mifepristone manufacturers and online sales, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith claimed, “More than 1 in 10 women who take mifepristone will experience a serious adverse event.”
The problem is, these things aren’t true.
Mifepristone’s alleged harms are junk science and false narrative propagated by an antiabortion group. Over a...
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