Studies Cited in Major Abortion Pill Ruling Retracted Due to Politics, Researchers Say

Charlotte Lozier Institute Senior Research Associate Tessa Longbons Cox is photographed on April 12, 2018. Anastasia Rowan/Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America

The Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI) makes no effort to hide its ties to the pro-life cause.

As the 501(c)(3) research and education arm of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, the institute is forthright about where it stands on abortion and other reproductive issues.

Since its founding in 2011, the organization’s network of scholars in medicine, public health, science, and other disciplines has published dozens of peer-reviewed studies on those topics. And until recently, that hadn’t posed a problem.

But when a Texas judge cited CLI research in his opinion halting the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, the institute’s work became the subject of scrutiny.

On Feb. 5, that scrutiny culminated in Sage Journals’ retraction of three CLI studies—including the two cited in the judge’s ruling—claiming a conflict of interest and “fundamental problems” with how they were conducted.

Now, the researchers behind those studies are pushing back on what they see as a politically motivated attack on their work and integrity.

Into the Spotlight

The Supreme Court’s June 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade opened the floodgates to all manner of abortion-related lawsuits.

Amid the flurry of ensuing litigation, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA was filed, challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit held that the agency failed to adequately assess the drug’s safety before approving its use in 2000. Finding their arguments convincing, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk granted a preliminary injunction, pausing the approval for the duration of the case.

In issuing the order, the judge cited two CLI studies concerning the emergency room utilization of women who underwent chemical or surgical abortions.

The first study found that abortion-related emergency room treatment rates among women who had a recent (within 30 days) chemical or surgical abortion saw a sharp increase between 2002 and 2015. Among those who had a surgical abortion, the increase was 315 percent. For chemical abortions, the rate skyrocketed by 507 percent.

The second study, a follow-up to the first, found that the number of abortion-related emergency room patients whom hospitals misclassified as having post-miscarriage complications also increased over the same period.

“Here, the [plaintiff medical] associations’ members have standing because they allege adverse events from chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system and place ‘enormous pressure and stress’ on doctors during emergencies and complications,” Judge Kacsmaryk wrote.

An appeals court later ruled that mifepristone could stay on the market—with certain restrictions—as the litigation continued. But by that point, CLI had been thrust into the spotlight.

Boxes of abortion pill mifepristone at a clinic in Des Moines, Iowa, on Sept. 22, 2010. Charlie Neibergall/AP Photo, File

Retracted

In June 2023, less than two months after Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling, the researchers he cited received a shocking notice: Sage was investigating their work.

South University pharmaceutical sciences professor Chris Adkins had complained to Sage about an apparent conflict of interest given that the authors were affiliated with CLI.

However, according to CLI Senior Research Associate Tessa Longbons Cox, she and her co-authors were upfront about their ties to CLI when they submitted their papers to Sage.

“It was no secret that we were affiliated with Lozier Institute—we all reported that,” Ms. Longbons Cox told The Epoch Times.

“We reported that the studies were funded by Lozier Institute. We even included a short bio for each author with more information on our work and what we did, and where we were employed. So certainly, we are making no secret of that fact. But to have that considered a conflict of interest is certainly not in line with how Sage has handled this sort of issue before.”

Ms. Longbons Cox noted that Sage hadn’t retracted other studies conducted by researchers affiliated with pro-abortion organizations. A 2010 study of the “Global Consequences of Unsafe Abortion,” for example, remains published despite the author’s clear affiliation with the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

Mr. Adkins, meanwhile, has made no secret of his own supportive stance on abortion.

In an August 2023 interview, the professor told News From the States that he saw the availability of the abortion pill as “essential to women’s reproductive health and bodily autonomy.”

He added: “I now have a daughter that is born in a world where there is no Roe v. Wade, no federal recognition that women have the right of bodily autonomy. And just, I don’t know. ... I’m going to support her in whatever way I can.”

Other issues Sage cited in its retraction notice included “unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions, material errors in the authors’ analysis of the data, and misleading presentations of the data”—claims Ms. Longbons Cox said the research team had fully rebutted.

Nonetheless, Sage ultimately retracted the two emergency room data studies and a third, unrelated study of how often doctors who perform abortions hold and use hospital admitting privileges.

The retraction notice was published just one week after the Supreme Court announced it would hear oral arguments in the mifepristone case on March 26.

Sage didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Not Backing Down’

The political implications are difficult to ignore for James Studnicki, CPI vice president of data analytics and the retracted studies’ lead author.

“I think Dobbs really accelerated this,” Mr. Studnicki said in a statement. “There’s a sense of desperation among those in the abortion industry. They’ve always had the literature to themselves. All of the major health associations are pro-abortion, most of the journals are pro-abortion, all the academic departments in the universities are pro-abortion.”

Mr. Studnicki, who trained at Johns Hopkins University, has spent a half-century conducting scientific research. He was also a member of the editorial board at Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology—the journal that published the three studies—until the retractions led to his removal.

“It’s profoundly sad to me what is going on in science today,” he said. “I’m at a point in my life, at 80 years old, where they won’t damage me. But what if I was a mid-career faculty member or someone aiming for tenure or trying to raise a family?

“Right now, the science industry’s message appears to be, ‘If we can do this to Dr. Studnicki, who’s had a 50-year career without blemish, imagine what we can do to you.’”

Despite their disappointment, Ms. Longbons Cox said she and her fellow researchers weren’t without hope of recourse.

“We’re working through the legal process, you know, want to make sure we’re doing everything we can to defend ourselves and defend our work,” she said.

“Also, we’re not stopping researching. That’s the reason we exist. That’s why we do what we do, and we’re already thinking through what other studies can be published.

“With all of the criticism and pushback we’ve received on these, can we use any of that to make our work in the future even stronger and think through new questions that need to be asked and answered? So we are not backing down.”