'They Abandoned Women': Trump Administration Under Fire for Leaving 'Deadly' Abortion Pills Unregulated

Donald Trump is facing renewed criticism from anti-abortion campaigners in the United States, who say his administration failed to properly regulate abortion pills, leaving women vulnerable to forced terminations in cases reported from Kentucky, Texas, Ohio and beyond this year. The complaints centre on mifepristone and similar drugs that can be prescribed online and sent by post, which critics argue have become a quiet weapon in the hands of abusive partners.

A growing number of criminal cases in US courts now involve men allegedly slipping abortion drugs into food, drink or medication without a woman's knowledge. In Glasgow, Kentucky, earlier this year, a man was accused of replacing his girlfriend's medication with abortion pills; her baby survived, but investigators say other women have not been so lucky. Heartbeat International, a global network of pro-life pregnancy centres, has begun publicly tracking such cases and says what is visible in the headlines is likely only a fraction of what is happening in private.

The group has documented 17 reported incidents of alleged 'abortion pill poisonings' going back to 2007, including two already logged this year. These include a Texas case where a woman in her fourth month of pregnancy lost her child after a man allegedly drugged her, and another Texas case in 2025 in which Justin Anthony Banta was charged with capital murder after prosecutors said he spiked his girlfriend's drink with crushed abortion pills, killing her unborn baby. In Ohio in 2024, physician Hassan Abbas was accused of forcing crushed abortion drugs into his pregnant girlfriend's mouth, with the reported result that her child died.

Heartbeat International spokeswoman Andrea Trudden argues the spreadsheet only scratches the surface. 'Publicly reported cases likely represent only a fraction of what is actually occurring,' she said in a statement shared with EWTN News, adding that many women never report when the person responsible is someone they know and once trusted. The tracker, she said, is intended as a 'factual resource' to expose patterns that might otherwise pass unnoticed.

How Trump's Abortion Pill Rules Became a Flashpoint

At the centre of the row is the way abortion pills can now be obtained in the US. The drugs can be prescribed via telehealth consultations, then shipped across state lines. In some circumstances, according to campaigners, the prescriber never even speaks to the woman on a video call, making it easier to impersonate a pregnant patient and order pills in her name.

Critics insist Trump's Food and Drug Administration left this system 'largely unregulated' despite what they frame as clear dangers both to women and to unborn children. The FDA under Trump did not remove mifepristone from the market, and although it maintained some restrictions, pro-life advocates say enforcement was too loose and that subsequent changes under Joe Biden have taken things even further in the direction of easy mail-order access.

Kristi Hamrick of Students for Life Action does not mince words about where she thinks responsibility lies. 'The chemical abortion pill policies left in place by the Trump administration empower abusers and pill pushers and abandon women and children,' she told EWTN News, calling for a sharp reversal. She described abortion pills as 'the abuser's dream drug' and argued that under the Biden administration it remains alarmingly simple for men to obtain 'deadly drugs.'

Hamrick wants federal authorities to enforce the Comstock Act, a 19th-century law that prohibits posting materials intended for abortion, and to challenge so-called 'shield laws' that protect providers who ship pills into states where they are banned. Local leaders, she added, should be telling women explicitly that coercion into abortion is a crime.

The Battle Over Pills

Inside the anti-abortion movement, the stories are piling up. Christa Brown, senior director of Medical Impact for Heartbeat International and head of its Abortion Pill Rescue Network, says she is hearing from more women who believe they are being drugged against their will. 'Many of these women are frightened, confused, and unsure where to turn,' she said. 'They often are afraid that no one will believe them.'

One woman, Rosalie Markezich, has alleged that her boyfriend pressured her into swallowing abortion pills and that she feared for her safety if she refused. She lost her unborn baby and later joined legal action challenging the FDA's handling of abortion drugs. Her case, like others, remains a live dispute rather than an established legal finding, and nothing has been finally resolved in court, so the broader claims should be treated with caution until judgments are handed down.

For anti-abortion campaigners, however, the pattern is already obvious. Noah Brandt, a spokesman for the group Live Action, claims these coercion cases reveal 'the brutal reality of the abortion pill' and are 'the predictable result of turning abortion into a no-oversight, mail-order business.' He says 65% of abortions in America are now chemical, and that this method has ended the lives of an estimated 7.5 million 'preborn children' figures that come from his organisation's analysis and have not been independently verified in this report.

Brandt is urging Trump and other national leaders to move beyond incremental tweaks and pull the abortion pill from the market completely. 'Mifepristone should not be safeguarded or repackaged,' he said. 'A civilised society does not mail poison to mothers or their abusers so their children can die alone at home.'

Alongside the political push, Heartbeat International points to its network of around 3,000 pregnancy centres across the US, which it says can help women who suspect they have been given abortion drugs or are under pressure to end a pregnancy. Staff, Trudden said, are trained to assess whether a woman feels safe in her home and to connect her with support if there are signs of coercion or abuse. In some cases, Brown added, doctors linked to the Abortion Pill Rescue Network will attempt to 'reverse' the effects of mifepristone using progesterone, a hormone that supports pregnancy.

Not all of these claims are accepted by mainstream medical bodies, and regulators have certainly not endorsed pulling the drugs altogether. Yet for the women who believe they have been secretly dosed, the argument can feel painfully abstract. As Brandt put it, in a line his critics would strongly contest: 'The abortion pill regime does not empower women. It endangers them and equips predators.'