The acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration has promised to prioritize a safety review of the abortion pill after his predecessor was accused of delaying it, pro-life leaders say.
Kyle Diamantas, FDA deputy commissioner for food, is serving as acting FDA commissioner in the wake of Dr. Marty Makary’s departure.
Though the Trump administration is reportedly soon picking a permanent commissioner to lead the agency, Diamantas promised he will be the “most pro-life FDA commissioner that the FDA has ever had” while in the role, Students for Life President Kristan Hawkins told The Daily Signal.
Within hours of Diamantas’ appointment, he called pro-life leaders, including Live Action President Lila Rose, Hawkins, and March for Life President Jennie Lichter.
His engagement with the pro-life movement comes amid widespread conservative disillusionment with the agency. Makary was under fire for allegedly slow walking a safety review of the abortion pill mifepristone and for a lack of transparency in the process. Much of the pro-life movement demanded his firing as a result.
Makary and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pledged to do a review of the safety of mifepristone following a study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center that showed 11% of women experience adverse effects after taking the pill regimen.
Hawkins told The Daily Signal that Diamantis admitted the agency needed to be more transparent about the abortion pill review. He said that the FDA would soon provide the pro-life movement with more information about the status of the review.
Similarly, Diamantis told Rose that “reviewing the abortion pill is a top priority for him and the administration,” Rose said on X.
Immediately after Diamantis’ promotion was announced, the pro-life movement raised concerns that he represented Planned Parenthood of Greater Orlando in one court case as a young lawyer. Diamantis told Rose he regrets that work, she said.
“He shared that he was assigned to the case by his law firm, performed work on it, and ultimately regretted his involvement because of his moral opposition to abortion,” Rose wrote. “He then asked his superiors to remove him from the case. He said that he is pro-life and cares deeply about the pro-life cause.”
Lichter said she’s optimistic that Diamantis will take the mifepristone safety study seriously in the role.
“@US_FDA, looking forward to working with you in this new era to make sure abortion drug companies can’t continue to lie to women about their drugs that are NOT ‘safer than Tylenol’ and that abusive men are stopped from ordering these dangerous drugs on the internet and force-feeding them to pregnant women,” Lichter said.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
