A Biden-era policy allowing abortion pills to be mailed without in-person visits is fueling a surge in chemical abortions, killing more than 500 unborn babies per day while harming hundreds of women with severe complications.
As a result, pro-life groups are urging President Donald Trump to swiftly reverse the measure and restore safeguards that could save lives.
The Restoration of America Foundation, a pro-life organization, detailed in a new report how the Food and Drug Administration’s 2023 decision to permit mifepristone to be prescribed via telehealth and shipped by mail has driven abortions nationwide to 1.1 million in 2024, up from 874,000 the previous year. The group estimates the policy has led to approximately 170,000 more abortions in 2024 than if rates had held steady from 2019 levels, with chemical abortions now comprising 63% of all procedures, compared to 39% in 2017.
REACH PRO-LIFE PEOPLE WORLDWIDE! Advertise with LifeNews to reach hundreds of thousands of pro-life readers every week. Contact us today.
“Since hitting a low in 2017, the national abortion rate has seen a persistent and troubling climb,” the ROAF report states.
ROAF CEO Doug Truax blamed the Biden administration’s removal of safety standards, which had required in-person visits for about 20 years, for the increase, noting that abortion-by-mail accounted for roughly one in four abortions in the first half of 2025.
Data from WeCount, cited in the report, shows an estimated 244,590 do-it-yourself abortions facilitated by telehealth in 2024, including more than 120,000 pills sent into states with abortion restrictions following the Supreme Court’s 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.
“The point that we’re making is that abortions are on the rise dramatically; 874,000 in 2023, up to 1.1 million in 2024,” Truax said. “Then on this trajectory, by the time President Trump leaves office, it’d be about 1.4 million a year. And so it’s largely driven by the drugs going out in the mail.”
Pro-life advocates emphasize the policy’s dangers, with Truax warning that “there’s about 150 women a day that are being seriously harmed by this drug,” including risks of sepsis, rupturing, hemorrhaging, and death from undetected ectopic pregnancies.
“So we need to get them to go see the doctor,” he added. “The doctor needs to verify where they’re at with the pregnancy. Obviously, if it’s an ectopic pregnancy, it means they could take this drug, and they could die from it, which has happened.”
Truax highlighted how the policy undermines state bans, saying of Texas: “They don’t have abortion anymore, but they sure do. People think it’s down to zero. It’s not at all. It’s about where it was.”
The report calls on Trump, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and FDA Commissioner Marty Makary to “act swiftly to restore commonsense medical safeguards to the chemical abortion pill,” arguing they “already have the tools at their disposal to reverse the legally and scientifically dubious decisions of the Biden Administration’s FDA and to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement.”
