After Bloomberg News reported FDA is slow-walking a safety review of the abortion drug mifepristone until after next year's midterm elections, leaders of the anti-abortion groups SBA Pro-Life America said Makary should be fired.
"Enough is enough: FDA Commissioner Makary should be fired immediately," SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. "Commissioner Makary is severely undermining President Trump and Vice President Vance's pro-life credentials and their position that states should have the right to enact and enforce pro-life protections. Makary must go."
Anti-abortion groups want the FDA to, at a minimum, immediately reinstate stricter regulations that prohibit mifepristone from being sent in the mail. The Biden administration rolled those back during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The administration dismissed those calls as "uninformed attacks."
"The White House maintains the utmost confidence in Commissioner Makary, whose leadership at the FDA has delivered and continues to deliver one landmark victory for the American people after another," White House spokesperson Kush Desai said.
"Uninformed attacks against Commissioner Makary from individuals outside the Administration will not change these facts," Desai said.
A White House official told The Hill that the study of mifepristone was not being "slow-walked," arguing that comprehensive reviews take time to complete.
To date, the White House has primarily attacked low-hanging fruit on abortion.
The administration slashed funds for family planning grants and rolled back a Biden-era policy on emergency access to abortion, but it has not yet taken major steps to curtail access.
The anti-abortion movement's patience with FDA has been wearing thin following the agency's approval of a second generic version of mifepristone, one of two drugs taken for a medication abortion. Tuesday's episode marked the latest instance of the Trump administration running afoul of the anti-abortion groups that backed him during the 2024 campaign.
Trump repeatedly pledged during the campaign last year that he would leave abortion policy to the states, but anti-abortion advocates and lawmakers have been pushing him to go further and sharply restrict the availability of mifepristone.
"NEW report saying FDA lied to me and other members of Congress & is not actively reviewing the chemical abortion drug at all," Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) posted on X. "FDA needs to stop dithering & reinstate the mifepristone safety guardrails. Nothing less is acceptable."
In letters to Republicans attorneys general in September, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Makary said the agency would be reviewing mifepristone due to "recent studies raising concerns about the safety of mifepristone as currently administered."
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