OPINION:
Three years ago this week, the infamous holdings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey were reversed by the Dobbs decision brilliantly written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, which said: “The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion” and then went on to return to “the people and their elected representatives … the authority to regulate or prohibit abortion.”
A new national debate on abortion began three years ago. Despite setbacks along the way, I believe that growing numbers of Americans are finally recognizing the cheap sophistry, mega deception and pro-abortion culture of denial that devalues and disrespects unborn girls and boys and trivializes the harm to women.
The comprehensive 2025 nationwide Marist abortion poll found that Americans oppose taxpayer funding of abortion in the U.S. and foreign aid, and that they strongly support pregnancy care centers and want significant restrictions on abortion.
A large number of elected representatives have passed pro-life bills to protect unborn children when a heartbeat can be detected, at about six weeks (Florida, Georgia, Iowa and South Carolina) or when the child suffers excruciating physical pain from the abortion procedure, at 12 to 15 weeks.
To date, 24 states have adopted laws to protect life at 15 weeks or earlier.
Meanwhile, each one of more than 2,700 pregnancy resource centers throughout the United States is an oasis of love, compassion, empathy, respect and care for mothers and their precious children.
Abortion extremists in several states, on the other hand, including my state of New Jersey, have enacted anti-child laws that authorize killing babies right up to the moment of birth while forcing taxpayers to subsidize the violent deed.
Twice, the Democratic-led House of Representatives passed extremist legislation that would have explicitly sanctioned abortion throughout all nine months of pregnancy, right up until birth, and would have nullified even modest restrictions enacted over the past half century, including informed consent, waiting periods and parental notification statutes.
The so-called abortion pill, mifepristone, kills the innocent unborn child by starving it to death.
We now know that mifepristone is also dangerous to women. This is especially important because this drug is used to procure at least 6 out of 10 abortions in the United States.
On April 28, the Ethics and Public Policy Center released a report titled “The Abortion Pill Harms Women: Insurance Data Reveals One in Ten Patients Experiences a Serious Adverse Event.” This report, led by researcher Jamie Bryan Hall, is the first in an ongoing series.
One key finding of the report: More than 1 out of 10 (10.93%) women who take the chemical abortion drug mifepristone experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or another serious adverse event within 45 days.
The Ethics and Public Policy Center analyzed data from an all-payer insurance claims database that includes 865,727 prescribed mifepristone abortions from 2017 through 2023. According to the organization, this is the “largest-known study of the abortion pill” and includes “28 times as many [abortions] as were included in all FDA-cited clinical trials combined.”
Although the study uses data no earlier than 2017, the Ethics and Public Policy Center notes that “the FDA approval of mifepristone relies on data from more than a decade ago.”
The Ethics and Public Policy Center explains that this “real-world, post-market study” is “representational of the women who obtain mifepristone abortion in the U.S.” Unlike other clinical trials, this study does not recruit “a prescreened group of generally healthy women.”
The Food and Drug Administration’s decision under the Obama and Biden administrations to progressively weaken the safety protocols around mifepristone is based on old, flawed data.
On the Mifeprex label, the FDA claims that less than 0.5% of women taking mifepristone experience serious adverse reactions. This claim is based on 10 older clinical trials studying a combined total of 30,966 participants. The recent report suggests that the number of serious adverse events is at least 22 times higher.
The FDA has conveniently failed to collect comprehensive safety data while making unsupported claims that mifepristone is safe.
Future generations will look back on us and wonder how and why a society that bragged about its commitment to human rights could have legally sanctioned and aggressively promoted child starvation, beheadings, dismemberment, chemical poisoning and forced expulsion from the womb.
They will also wonder how, in an information age, so many were deceived into believing that abortion was safe. The injustice of abortion need not be forever.
• Rep. Chris Smith is serving his 45th year representing New Jersey’s 4th Congressional District.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.