Blood on Their Hands: How the Clinton Admin Forced the Abortion Pill on the United States

Former President Bill Clinton once envisioned "an America where abortion is safe and legal, but rare."

At least, that was his claim on Jan. 22, 1993, the 20th anniversary of Roe v. Wade and his third day occupying the Oval Office.

Ironically, Clinton uttered those words as he launched what would become a years-long crusade to foist the abortion drug mifepristone, then called RU-486, upon the nation over the objections of many—including the drug's own manufacturer in France.

At the time, mifepristone's safety was largely untested. Now, decades later, we know that its use is neither safe nor rare.

So, why the determination to bring the drug to the United States?

The apparent answer: A sinister combination of politics and the culling of the human race.

Bill Clinton on January 22 1993: Abortion should be Safe, Legal, And Rare pic.twitter.com/x1SzaJAUX5

— Terri Green (@TerriGreenUSA) August 23, 2024

A Reluctant Business Partner

One of Clinton's first official acts as president was to task his health secretary, Donna Shalala, with figuring out how to bring mifepristone to the U.S. drug market.

At the time, women in France, China, the U.K., and Sweden were already using the drug for pregnancy termination. In the United States, however, the FDA had banned imports of mifepristone under the Bush administration, building on the pro-life legacy of President Ronald Reagan.

Pulling an about-face, Bush holdover and FDA Commissioner David Kessler spearheaded the Clinton administration's push to bring drug-induced abortion to the United States.

And push he did, because Roussel-Uclaf, mifepristone's French manufacturer, was adamant in its refusal to sell the drug on the U.S. market. In fact, the pharmaceutical company didn't really want to sell mifepristone in France, either.

Dr. Étienne-Émile Baulieu, who spearheaded the drug's development, told the New York Times in 2023 that he hid his true purpose in doing so from Wolfgang Hilger, the CEO of Roussel-Uclaf's German parent company, Hoechst.

Recognizing that Hilger was Catholic and staunchly anti-abortion, Beaulieu, who served as a consultant on the project, emphasized mifepristone's cortisol-blocking properties in company meetings instead.

Eventually, he dropped the pretense and urged Roussel-Uclaf to market the drug as an abortifacient. When the company obliged, the public backlash was swift, with some drawing links between mifepristone and the cyanide gas Hoechst's predecessor company, I.G. Farben, supplied the Nazis with for their death camps.

In October 1988, just weeks after the French government approved the pill for use, Roussel-Uclaf announced it was pulling the drug off the market, citing an “outcry of public opinion at home and abroad.”

The drugmaker, which was partly owned by the French government, reversed course days later at the demand of France's health minister. But given the negative attention Roussel-Uclaf had already attracted, the company was wary of doing business in the United States, where anti-abortion sentiment was still strong.

Pill Pushers

In a September 1993 memo initially obtained by Judicial Watch, Kessler informed Shalala of Roussel-Uclaf's "liability and boycott concerns." The company demanded indemnification from any potential damages arising from pro-life protests or any complications women might experience from mifepristone.

Kessler wrote that the FDA had informed the drugmaker that "it would go far beyond FDA's appropriate role to seek such protection for a drug company."

Agency representatives still offered "to advance the idea within the department" anyway.

Kessler detailed the administration's efforts to strongarm Roussel-Uclaf and Hoechst into signing over the patent rights for mifepristone to the New York-based Population Council, a nonprofit Roussel-Uclaf had previously contracted with to conduct U.S. clinical trials of the drug.

Noting the "pressure" Clinton, Shalala, and the FDA had already exerted on the company to come to the table, Kessler suggested that the administration could leverage its diplomatic ties to turn up the heat.

"It may be that France and Germany would be unhappy to learn that their companies were not accommodating a request made by the United States government," Kessler wrote. "The U.S. ambassadors to France and Germany will need to be consulted on these issues, and your counterparts in France and Germany may also need to be involved."

That proposal notwithstanding, Kessler appears to have had a moment of reticence in acknowledging that the FDA "cannot take this issue too far without compromising its role as objective reviewers of the safety and efficacy of the drug."

He advocated for bringing in investment banker Felix Rohatyn—whom Clinton later tapped for ambassador to France—as an "expert advisor" to minimize any conflicts and help advance the administration's goal.

Playing Politics

As these talks took place behind closed doors, the administration was careful to ensure the president kept his nose clean, politically.

In May 1994, before a final deal was reached, the negotiations broke down to the point where Roussel-Uclaf floated gifting the patent rights for mifepristone to the U.S. government rather than the Population Council.

Shalala's chief of staff, Kevin Thurm, outlined the potential risks of that situation in a missive to Carol Rasco, Clinton's Domestic Policy Council director.

In addition to the logistical issues of accepting such a gift, Thurm noted that transferring the information necessary to manufacture the drug to a licensee could expose the government to potential liability.

"In short, to the extent the government refuses to become involved in actually transferring the technology, tort liability is kept at bay. But licensees may be kept at bay as well, leaving the government holding the patents with no prospect of bringing RU-486 to the women in America," he wrote.

Thurm devoted the rest of his lengthy memo to defining the political tightrope the administration would need to walk if negotiations between the Population Council and Roussel-Uclaf failed.

He pointed out that accepting the patent rights for mifepristone could "energize" Clinton's base. He described the anticipated Republican opposition and pro-life demonstrations as a "marginal political cost" compared to the enthusiasm from the left.

"In the worst case, it could put the abortion issue centerstage, with the Clinton Administration as a high-profile player right up through the kick-off of the 1996 re-election campaign," Thurm posited.

He also suggested messaging to "shield the administration against the fallout" from its own allies if efforts to bring the drug to market stalled.

Thurm made it clear that the administration's preferred scenario would be an agreement between Roussel-Uclaf and the Population Council, and that officials had "taken steps consistently and firmly to so insist."

Days later, a contract between the two was announced—one that freed the drugmaker from any product liability claims and allowed the administration to push forward with its agenda.

Dark Motives

The administration continued its careful political posturing after the mifepristone deal was struck, but the president's motives for promoting the drug were nonetheless on full display.

Within a matter of weeks, Clinton was publicly encouraging families to have fewer children.

"One-third of our children are already hungry, two of every five people on Earth lack basic sanitation, and large parts of the world exist with only one doctor for every 35 or 40,000 people," Clinton said on June 29, 1994, during a State Department speech.

"It is clear that we need a comprehensive approach to the world's future. If you look at the numbers, you must reduce the rate of population growth."

While he claimed his administration did not support "abortion as a method of family planning," he nevertheless went on to advocate for worldwide access to the procedure in a speech promoting the use of family planning for population control.

Notably, population control was also the original objective of the Population Council, the chosen vessel for facilitating mifepristone's introduction to the United States.

The nonprofit, founded by John D. Rockefeller III, emerged on the scene in 1952 to promote eugenics and the deliberate "reduction of fertility" to effectively wipe out the poor, racial minorities, and other populations members deemed unfit for reproduction. Early players included American Eugenics Society founding member Frederick Osborn, who served as the organization's first administrator, and then-Planned Parenthood Federation of America Director William Vogt, who popularized the idea that Earth has a limited "carrying capacity" for humanity.

In fact, the roots of the abortion industry are steeped in the eugenics movement, thanks to such proponents as Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a well-documented and unapologetic racist and eugenicist who advocated for a "cleaner race."

While Clinton may have sought to downplay his position's ties to that movement, at least one of his supporters was less concerned with the optics.

In a letter initially obtained by Judicial Watch, attorney James "Ron" Weddington urged "President-to-be Clinton" to promote government-funded abortions—both chemical "and conventional abortions"—to eliminate the lower class.

"You can start immediately to eliminate the barely educated, unhealthy and poor segment of our country," wrote Weddington, who, alongside his then-wife, convinced the Supreme Court in Roe to green-light decades of unregulated abortion nationwide.

Weddington claimed he was not calling for "some sort of mass extinction" of the poor, but went on to suggest that Clinton "use persuasion rather than coercion" to achieve the same end.

"You will have to enlist the aid of sports and entertainment stars to counteract the propaganda spread by church officials seeking parishioners, generals seeking cannon fodder and businessmen seeking cheap labor that, throughout the ages, has convinced the poor that children are necessary to fulfillment as a person," Weddington wrote.

He argued that humanity's survival "depends on our developing a population where everyone contributes. We don't need more cannon fodder. We don't need more parishioners. We don't need more cheap labor. We don't need more poor babies."

As if that weren't distasteful enough, Weddington also proudly touted his credentials as co-counsel in Roe and a man who had "sired zero children and one fetus," whom his wife aborted. He added:

"I had a vasectomy in 1969 and have never had one moment of regret."

Although the letter is dated Jan. 6, 1992, the cover letter addressed to Clinton's "transition team" suggests it was likely written in 1993. Given what it promotes, however, the message might as well have been written in 1952 by Rockefeller himself.

A Legacy of Death

The Clinton FDA approved Mifeprex, or brand-name mifepristone, in September 2000, and the dangerous impacts of that decision are still reverberating today.

A recent study by the Foundation for the Restoration of America found that nearly 11 percent of women who take mifepristone for an abortion experience at least one serious adverse health effect, which could include sepsis, hemorrhage, or even death.

The FDA's COVID-19 pandemic-era decision to lift its in-person dispensation requirement for mifepristone has only heightened that risk. That change, made permanent in 2023, means women can now order abortion pills online—even in Texas, where abortion is illegal—and take them at home without a doctor's supervision or an ultrasound.

That's particularly alarming given that an ultrasound is necessary to rule out an ectopic pregnancy, on which mifepristone has no effect. If left untreated, the condition could be fatal.

Despite those dangers, chemical abortion is now the most popular method of pregnancy termination in the country, accounting for 63 percent of all U.S. abortions—or about 642,700 abortions—in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

Danco Laboratories, Mifeprex's manufacturer, reports that more than 5 million women have taken the drug since its approval—not including those who have taken the generic version, which became available in 2019.

That is a significant number of women exposing themselves to potentially life-threatening complications, all for an entirely elective procedure.

“So many people, including smart people, think there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control.

It's completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers.”
Elon Musk
pic.twitter.com/3lMltuOq1m

— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) December 10, 2024

Meanwhile, the national birth rate has declined to a near-record low, marking a victory for the population control movement, which lives on, backed by such powerful proponents as billionaire Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum.

The birth rate crisis has even caught the attention of Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has repeatedly warned that the world is on a trajectory toward population collapse.

“So many people, including smart people, think there are too many people in the world and think that the population is growing out of control. It's completely the opposite. Please look at the numbers,” Musk told the Wall Street Journal in December 2021.

A glimmer of hope has nonetheless appeared with the election of President Donald Trump, who is already working to reverse the downward trend.

But as for Clinton and the rest of his administration, the blood of millions of babies will forever stain their hands.

(READ MORE: Big Abortion Brought in $4.3 Billion in 2023 Alone)