On March 25, 2026, members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, led by committee chairman Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), launched an investigation into the three companies that manufacture mifepristone: Danco, GenBioPro, and Evita. Cassidy was joined in his investigation by Senators Steve Daines (R-MT), James Lankford (R-OK), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — all of whom had previously been endorsed by the anti-abortion political group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. These members of the Senate HELP Committee claimed that abortion pill manufacturers were violating federal law by failing to adequately enforce the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies, commonly referred to as REMS, for mifepristone. They ultimately used this investigation to urge the U.S. Food and Drug Administration  to reinstate previous restrictions on mifepristone, including the in-person dispensing requirement, and investigate online sellers of abortion pills.

The results of this investigation, which were published in August 2026, are based in anti-abortion propaganda from conception to publication. The report detailing the findings of this investigation opens by citing the debunked anti-abortion pseudo-study on mifepristone, positioning its questionable findings as proof of the anti-abortion claim that mifepristone harms women.

To understand this investigation, it’s important to talk about the history of placing REMS restrictions on mifepristone for political reasons, not medical reasons. Mifepristone was placed under REMS in 2011, 11 years after it was approved in the United States. Mifepristone is safe and effective, and studies consistently confirm this. Regardless, the Food and Drug Administration chose to place REMS on mifepristone—which it has done to only a few medications—creating an aura of perceived risk on a drug with a long track record of safe use. The end result is that access to mifepristone has been unnecessarily restricted, with the REMS putting additional barriers to access by requiring patients and doctors to jump through unnecessary hoops. In 2023 the REMS were relaxed when the Food and Drug Administration permanently removed in-person dispensing requirements, a practice of requiring doctors to physically hand pills to patients that are imposed on almost no drug and that was completely medically unnecessary for mifepristone. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has “long advocated for the removal of the REMS restrictions on the use of mifepristone,” stating that mifepristone’s proven safety record means that REMS only serve to increase barriers to access. Anti-abortion leaders have continued to fight for the restoration of medically-unnecessary REMS on the medication, taking it to the Supreme Court twice: once to push for the reinstatement of the in-person dispensing requirement, and once to demand the Food and Drug Administration revoke mifepristone’s approval entirely. Make no mistake: these attacks on mifepristone are not about safety and are not based on good science.

The Senate HELP Committee’s report goes into detail about the operations of the three mifepristone manufacturers, including hundreds of pages of documentation. The committee’s primary claim is that these manufacturers are failing to adequately enforce the REMS for mifepristone, citing the provision of mifepristone to potentially anonymous clients via grassroots networks such as Aid Access. This assumes that all of the providers at these organizations are certified mifepristone prescribers acquiring mifepristone through one of the three abortion pill manufacturers. The committee fails to note until near the end of the report that the REMS “did not require any sort of oversight into the prescribers,” meaning that these manufacturers were not in violation of federal law by failing to crack down on prescribers who may or may not be certified through their companies. The report even states that, despite their initial claims, the committee could not find any clear violations of the law on the part of the manufacturers, instead claiming these companies are “indifferent” towards the alleged harms of mifepristone. Despite claiming that these manufacturers are not adequately enforcing the REMS on mifepristone, this report cites multiple instances in which the manufacturers took action to ensure pharmacies were dispensing mifepristone in accordance with REMS.

It becomes clear towards the end of the report that this investigation’s claims come at least in part from a video posted by the anti-abortion American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists on March 11, 2026 — just two weeks before the HELP Committee investigation was announced. In the video, American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists CEO Dr. Christina Francis claims to have acquired abortion pills from Aid Access while posing as a 13-year-old with several health issues and multiple past pregnancies. While the video shows snippets of the screen that seem to confirm Francis’s story, there is no way to confirm that Francis ultimately received pills using this information. Francis also redacts some information shown on the screen, including the name of the website the email address she allegedly received a confirmation email from.

Throughout the report, the manufacturers come under scrutiny for both sharing information with the committee and withholding information: when the companies chose to withhold information for security or commercial concerns, the committee framed them as secretive; if the companies later chose to share information with the committee, the committee claimed it “raise[s] questions about the validity of purported security and commercial concerns.” Given the resurgence of the anti-abortion “rescue” movement and the increasing protests held in the neighborhoods of individuals associated with abortion clinics, this level of discretion on the part of these manufacturers appears warranted.

Ultimately, this report is meant to bolster anti-abortion calls to reinstate strict restrictions on mifepristone, including in-person dispensing requirements. The report closes with a call to reinstate this requirement, as well as a call for the Department of Justice to “explore legal mechanisms to address instances of willful noncompliance with REMS requirements by prescribers” despite the fact that this investigation found no proof of wrongdoing by mifepristone manufacturers.