Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suggested that he is open to restricting access to abortion medication, the primary method used for abortions across the U.S.

Kennedy pledged to study the abortion drug mifepristone on President Trump's request during his confirmation hearings, citing “safety issues.” He did not offer further explanation of what those issues were.

“President Trump has asked me to study the safety of mifepristone,” Kennedy said during the hearings last month. “He has not yet taken a stand on how to regulate it. Whatever he does, I will implement those policies.”

If the administration does seek to restrict access to the drug, health policy experts do not think Kennedy will attempt to remove it from the market, but say he could instead try to direct agencies within HHS to limit who can take mifepristone and how it can be administered.

“If you are trying to make a product harder to access ... you are going to institute restrictions that reduce the ease in which people can access the product,” said Caleb Alexander, a physician and professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health with research focus on drug utilization and safety.

HHS oversees 13 agencies including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is........

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