US Supreme Court’s upcoming Abortion decision puts spotlight on Medication Abortion

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The war over abortion rights is moving into a new chapter, while the Supreme Court considers whether to scrap its nearly five-decade-old decision in Roe v. Wade, with both sides of the issue girding for states to shift their focus to medication that induces abortion in early pregnancy. The upcoming decision from the high court, coupled with an easing of federal rules governing how abortion pills are dispensed. It was announced on Thursday and brought new urgency to efforts in Republican-led states to place new limits on medication abortion. Senior Advocacy and policy counsel for reproductive freedom at the American Civil Liberties Union, Jessica Arons said, “Medication abortion is one more lens through which we see that we are witnessing a tale of two countries”.

Arons added, “Half the states are protecting access to abortion and half are trying every single way they can to eliminate access to abortion care”. The US FDA (Food and Drug Administration) approved the drug mifepristone taken together with a second medicine for use in terminating a pregnancy through 10-weeks’ gestation in 2000. The agency also imposed restrictions in 2011, on the use of mifepristone, requiring it to be prescribed and dispensed to patients in person by a certified prescriber. The main drug in the protocol also cannot be dispensed by retail pharmacies and pregnant women can only obtain the pill from clinicians approved by the manufacturer. But the COVID-19 pandemic led the FDA in April to relax its in-person dispensing requirements during the public health emergency.

FDA conducted a review of the restrictions, prompted by a lawsuit filed by the ACLU in 2017, and made the changes permanent on Thursday. Aron said, “If and when the FDA removes its medically unnecessary restrictions on medication abortion, this will increase access for folks in states without state-level restrictions. But in states where abortion is quite restricted, they’ve already locked down those options, eliminated those options. Folks in those states won’t be able to feel the benefit of that decision”. The state policy director at Susan B. Anthony List (an anti-abortion rights organization) Sue Liebel said, “That wasn’t the first red flag, but the biggest red flag that the FDA was poised to either reduce or completely remove the health and safety regulations, and that would make it the Wild Wild West of the drugs. States are keen about what is going on”.