The Senate committee overseeing health policy debated abortion pill regulation in a hearing on Wednesday, where some Republicans urged the administration to crack down on easy access to the drug mifepristone.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., who chairs the Senate Committee on Health, Labor, Education and Pensions, criticized a policy instituted under former President Joe Biden and continued under President Donald Trump, which has allowed mifepristone to be available by mail.

“At an absolute minimum, the previous in-person safeguards [for getting the pill] should be restored, and it should be done immediately,” Cassidy said in his opening statement.

Starting in 2021, Biden’s Food and Drug Administration began to cease enforcing a longstanding in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills.

In a significant change, the move allowed women to access mifepristone by mail. According to Guttmacher, the abortion pill accounted for 63% of abortions in the U.S. in 2023, up from 53% in 2020 and 39% in 2017.

Cassidy and other Republicans, in addition to opposing the act of abortion itself on moral grounds, argue that allowing mail-order mifepristone is irresponsible, due to the drug’s side effects.

He urged Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to finish a safety review of mifepristone “that they both promised us during their confirmation........

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