1014 - How the FDA Regulates Mifepristone, "the Abortion Pill"

Public Health On Call

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

News, Health & Fitness, Medicine

4.6 • 644 Ratings

🗓️ 23 February 2026

⏱️ 12 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

About this episode:

A recent analysis of FDA documents has found that the agency has historically regulated mifepristone—a medication commonly used to terminate pregnancy—based on available scientific evidence and without ideological bias. In this episode: Caleb Alexander, an author of the study, discusses these findings and their implications for a possible new review of the medication by FDA.

Guests:

Dr. G. Caleb Alexander, MS, is a practicing internist and drug safety expert at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Host:

Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Show links and related content:

The US Food and Drug Administration's Regulation of Mifepristone—JAMA
Study: FDA Regulation of Abortion Drug Mifepristone from 2011 to 2023 Shaped by Evidence and Caution—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
F.D.A. Decisions on Abortion Pill Were Based on Science, New Analysis Finds—New York Times
What Is Mifepristone, aka "The Abortion Pill"?—Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
What's at Stake for Access to Medication Abortion and the FDA in the Supreme Court Case FDA v. the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine?—KFF

Transcript information:

Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel.

Contact us:

Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,
0:05.9	where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.
0:16.3	If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.
0:23.8	That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.
0:31.2	Hey listeners, it's Lindsay Smith-Rogers. Today, Miffa-Bristone and the FDA.
0:36.2	Dr. Caleb Alexander returns to the show to talk to us about a new study that looks at how the FDA has approached regulation of Mipapristone, why they initiated this investigation and how they hope the results will contribute to conversations of reproductive health in the U.S.
0:51.3	Let's listen.
0:52.5	Dr. Caleb Alexander, thank you so much for returning to public
0:56.0	health on call. How you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. So today we are talking to you
1:01.2	about a new investigation. You were the senior author on this about the FDA and Miphyprisone. But to
1:06.9	start us off, would you tell us a bit about you, your work, and how it relates to
1:11.6	Miphybristone?
1:12.8	Yeah, well, I'm a pharmacorepidemiologist, so I study the use, safety, and effectiveness of
1:17.9	prescription drugs.
1:19.1	And Miphyprisone is a prescription drug.
1:22.7	It's a progesterone receptor antagonist, sort of fancy words for saying that it blocks the effect of progesterone,
1:30.2	which is a sex hormone, on the body. And when used with misoprostol, which is a prostate glandin
1:37.5	analog, it's the most common medication abortion regimen in the United States. And it's widely used as an abortion regimen
1:47.4	around the world, frankly. Mithipristone can also be for women who have had a spontaneous
1:53.9	but incomplete miscarriage or abortion. And it can also be used for a completely distinct purpose,
2:00.5	which is to reduce high
2:02.1	sugar levels in adults with Cushing syndrome. And so today we're talking about Miffipristone,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.