Scientists are suing an academic publishing company for retracting three key studies exposing the dangers of the nation’s most popular abortion drug regimen shortly before the U.S. Supreme Court was slated to hear arguments in a landmark mifepristone case.
Ten of the researchers responsible for producing the three scientific papers filed a petition to compel arbitration this week against Sage Publications for issuing what they called “pretextual and discriminatory” retractions of their findings on the abortion pill. One of the studies in question, which the lawsuit notes is “the second most-read article” in the journal’s history, specifically determined mifepristone is responsible for a 500 percent increase in abortion-related emergency room visits.
The 2019, 2021, and 2022 papers originally passed peer review for publication without a hitch. The editor-in-chief of Sage’s Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology (HSRME) journal even emailed Dr. James Studnicki, the lead author of the 2021 and 2022 papers, to commend him for his “fine contribution[s],” according to the petition.
In February 2024, however, Sage’s tune changed over a “reader’s concern” that the authors’ links to pro-life organizations “present conflicts of interest that the authors should have disclosed as such in the article.”
Abortion activist researchers publish plenty of papers on the topic without scrutiny. Yet Sage, after what it called an “independent review,” ultimately followed through with the retractions.
“Sage’s wrongdoing has been causing enormous and incalculable harm to the Authors’ professional reputations, as Sage intended. Because of Sage’s retractions, the Authors and their research
