Friday, Feb. 6, 2026
Is Mifepristone significantly more dangerous than Tylenol?
Both mifepristone and acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, are widely used and studied drugs considered by experts to be safe and effective with hospitalization rates of less than 1%.
Though a higher percentage of milfepristone users require hospitalization than acetaminophen users, Sen. Lankford’s usage of this to claim that a prescription drug is more dangerous than an over-the-counter drug is unsound given the considerable differences between their purposes and the populations using them.
The fundamental differences between these drugs make any comparative claim regarding their safety “false, lacking in fair balance, or otherwise misleading,” according to FDA regulations for manufacturers.
Considering only causally related deaths, milfepristone has a mortality rate of 0.31 deaths per 100,000 abortions–less than half the overall abortion mortality rate of 0.7 and 28 times smaller than the pregnancy-related mortality rate of those who have a live-born infant.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- National Library of Medicine Acetaminophen Toxicity
- Supreme Court of the United States BRIEF OF OVER 300 REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH RESEARCHERS AS AMICI CURIAE IN SUPPORT OF PETITIONERS
- American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists Mifepristone in the Courts
- National Library of Medicine Incidence of emergency department visits and complications after abortion
- Code of Federal Regulations § 202.1 Prescription-drug advertisements.
- Advancing New standards in Reproductive Understanding medication abortion complications as published by the FDA
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by newsrooms in the Gigafact network.
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