Abortion pills by mail are safe. The FDA finally acknowledged it.

But it left other unnecessary restrictions in place, reminding us that abortion care is treated differently.

By Daniel Grossman
Dec 20, 2021

It took a pandemic, a lawsuit and an eight-month review of the evidence, but the Food and Drug Administration has finally loosened some of the restrictions it imposed 21 years ago on mifepristone, which is used together with a second medication, misoprostol, for medication abortion. While the FDA could have gone further, this move is based on solid scientific evidence and will improve access to abortion care for at least some people.

At issue was the FDA’s risk evaluation and mitigation strategy, or REMS, an extra layer of regulatory scrutiny that the agency applies to a small number of drugs that have safety concerns. Given decades-long experience with mifepristone and documenting the safety of the medication, physicians and researchers have been urging the FDA for years to remove mifepristone’s REMS. Not only was there no clear rationale about how the restrictions on mifepristone improved the drug’s safety, but there are many medications, including Viagra, with more significant risks without a REMS.

Continued: ttps://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/12/20/telemedicine-abortion-fda-safe/

California plans for a post-Roe world as abortion access shrinks elsewhere

Rachel Bluth, Kaiser Health News
Nov 18, 2021

SACRAMENTO — With access to abortion at stake across America, California is preparing to become the nation’s abortion provider.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislative leaders have asked a group of reproductive health experts to propose policies to bolster the state’s abortion infrastructure and ready it for more patients. Lawmakers plan to begin debating the ideas when they reconvene in January.

Continued: https://www.vvdailypress.com/story/news/2021/11/18/california-plans-post-roe-world-abortion-access-shrinks/8668342002/

It’s Time for the Biden Administration to Let Pharmacists Dispense the Abortion Pill

Making the abortion pill available through pharmacies on prescription can improve abortion access—especially for those without an abortion clinic nearby.

4/6/2021
by DANIEL GROSSMAN and SALLY RAFIE

In the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated existing inequities to abortion care across the country. Last spring, at least 11 states attempted to exploit the crisis to enact additional abortion restrictions, falsely labeling it non-essential care.

In an attempt to ease abortion access during the pandemic, a federal judge in July 2020 halted the in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion pill to allow patients to receive it by mail. However, this was reversed by the Supreme Court’s decision in January 2021 to once again enforce federal restrictions and clamp down on access to this critical medicine.

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2021/04/06/biden-administration-pharmacists-dispense-abortion-pill-pharmacy/

USA – Covid Put Remote Abortion to the Test. Supporters Say It Passed.

Medication abortion was briefly available online in some states, but a court ruling blocked it. Advocates want it back.

BY REBECCA GRANT
04.05.2021

LAST SUMMER, Cindy Adam and Lauren Dubey received the news they had hoped for, but hadn’t expected to get so soon. Their new telemedicine clinic would be able to offer remote medication abortion services, at least for the time being.

Medication abortion — which most commonly involves taking two medications, 24 to 48 hours apart, during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy — has been available in the U.S. since 2000. But, despite a growing chorus of advocates and experts who say remote access is just as safe as in-clinic care, the Food and Drug Administration requires providers to dispense mifepristone, the first of the two medications, inside the walls of a clinic, hospital, or medical office, citing the risk of complications. Most abortion providers interpreted this language to mean they could not mail mifepristone to patients’ homes, rendering fully remote abortion care impossible.

Continued: https://undark.org/2021/04/05/digital-abortion-access/

05.04.2021

Commentary

Featured

abortion access during pandemic

abortion pills by mail

ACLU

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

Aid Access

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

American Civil Liberties Union

ANSIRH

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Charlotte Lozier Institute

Choix

Covid-19 and abortion

Daniel Grossman

Elisa Wells

Elizabeth Raymond

Food and Drug Administration

Graham Chelius

Gynuity Health Projects

Hey Jane

Ibis Reproductive Health

in-person requirement

Reproductive Freedom Project

Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies

Sonia Sotomayor

TelAbortion Study

telehealth

telemedicine abortion

traveling for abortion

Supreme Court Reinstates Barriers to Abortion by Telemedicine

The Court requires in-person visits for patients seeking medication abortion despite the risks of COVID-19.

Mar 15, 2021
Carrie N. Baker

In January, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a Trump Administration request to reinstate a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rule requiring patients seeking a medication abortion to make a medically unnecessary in-person visit to their health care provider to pick up the abortion pill mifepristone.

The Court’s decision in FDA v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists reverses a federal district court ruling from last July that suspended the FDA rule during the pandemic. In that lower court decision, Judge Theodore Chuang ruled that the FDA’s required in-person visit imposed a “substantial obstacle” to abortion health care that is likely unconstitutional.

Continued: https://www.theregreview.org/2021/03/15/baker-supreme-court-reinstates-barriers-abortion-telemedicine/

USA – They’re Doctors. They’re Also Incredibly Effective—and Dangerous—Anti-Abortion Activists.

They’re Doctors. They’re Also Incredibly Effective—and Dangerous—Anti-Abortion Activists.
Your OB-GYN could be one of them.

Marisa Endicott
June 4, 2020

In April 2019, when meetings like this still took place, Diane Foley took the stage in Indianapolis, looking out into the faces of anti-choice advocates and doctors who were gathered for their annual conference. The Health and Human Services official began her presentation: “Opportunities for Collaborative Engagement in Policy Development.” The bland, policy-wonkish title belied its almost-revolutionary substance: nothing less than a major shift in American health care—and a threat to the more than 4 million primarily low-income people who rely on a key government program for family planning and other care.

Title X, which Foley oversees as the head of the Office of Population Affairs—and which also includes the government’s teen pregnancy program—offers health care providers more than $286 million in funding each year. Just a month before her presentation, a new rule passed that would, for the first time, prohibit Title X recipients from performing abortions on-site or even providing abortion referrals. This effectively shut out a quarter of all clinics that were getting funding—including Planned Parenthood, which has traditionally received some $60 million a year from the program and provides more than 2.4 million patients with a slew of services, from birth control to cancer screenings to wellness exams.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/american-association-pro-life-obstetricians-gynecologists-aaplog-anti-abortion-doctors-june-medical-supreme-court-decision/

04.06.2020

Commentary

Featured

AAPLOG

Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health

Alina Salganicoff

Amanda Thayer

American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists

American College of Pediatricians

ANSIRH

anti-choice extremism

Dr. Christina Francis

Dr. Jen Gunter

Equity Forward

Expert Witness Project

Health and Human Services

Issues in Law & Medicine

June Medical Services v. Russo

Kaiser Family Foundation

Life Network

Marisa Endicott

Mary Alice Carter

merican College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Naral Pro-Choice America

Obria

Office of Population Affairs

Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act

Planned Parenthood

Purvi Patel

Roe v. Wade

Southern Poverty Law Center

Title X

Vanessa Wellbery

Watson Bowes Research Institute

How coronavirus is changing access to abortion

How coronavirus is changing access to abortion
Health care practitioners are struggling to maintain access to contraception and abortions during the pandemic.

By MIRIAM WEBBER
05/21/2020

As the coronavirus steamrolls the global order, reproductive health care practitioners and advocates are struggling to maintain access to contraception and abortions.

Lockdowns and disrupted supply chains have prompted a flurry of action in the sector as governments, practitioners and advocates react to a crisis that has highlighted the often tenuous access to sexual health care products and services.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/05/21/how-coronavirus-is-changing-access-to-abortion-273193

USA – It’s Time For A Revolution In At-Home Abortion

It's Time For A Revolution In At-Home Abortion
The coronavirus pandemic has exposed the fiction that most abortions need to be performed in a clinic setting.

By Melissa Jeltsen, HuffPost US
04/08/2020

The callers wanted to know how to end their pregnancies without going outside. Many were afraid to travel for fear of contracting the coronavirus, which spreads through contact with others. Some didn’t have the financial resources to make an arduous, often multi-day trip to an abortion clinic. Others were stuck in states where abortions were temporarily halted by Republican leaders exploiting the crisis to erode access.

Faced with dwindling options, callers to the helpline run by the reproductive rights group If/When/How, were considering “self-managed abortion,” loosely defined as ending a pregnancy without the formal supervision of a health care professional. Calls to the confidential helpline have more than doubled in the past two weeks, according to Jill Adams, the group’s executive director.

Continued: https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/abortion-at-home-medication-abortion_n_5e8cd4e6c5b62459a9304428?ri18n=true&ncid=NEWSSTAND0001

USA – What to Know About Giving Yourself an Abortion

What to Know About Giving Yourself an Abortion
Ending a pregnancy on your own means using pills—not coat hangers.

by Marie Solis
Feb 17 2020

Abortions happened before it was legal to get one, and, should it ever become illegal again, they will happen then too—many of them outside of clinics, without direct medical supervision.

But doing your own abortion in 2020 looks a lot different than it did pre- Roe v. Wade. People who self-induced abortions in the decades before the landmark Supreme Court ruling sometimes resorted to drinking toxic chemicals, throwing themselves down the stairs, or using crude instruments like knitting needles or a coat hanger, the latter of which has become a universal symbol of the life-threatening consequences of restricting people’s access to abortion care. The hanger may still function as a powerful image, but it’s no longer accurate when it comes to representing what it means to self-induce an abortion: Self-inducing or self-managing an abortion is now synonymous with taking pills, a safe and effective method of ending a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/884m9x/how-to-do-your-own-abortion-with-pills

USA – Why 2020 presidential candidates should support over-the-counter access to abortion pills

Why 2020 presidential candidates should support over-the-counter access to abortion pills
Medication abortion is safe, and the FDA approval process should start now. Meanwhile, policymakers should lift unnecessary restrictions on the pills.

Daniel Grossman, Opinion contributor
Dec. 18, 2019

Abortion access is facing a monumental crisis, as states across the nation continue to advance and enact restrictive abortion laws, the Trump administration puts in place reproductive health policies that ignore science, and the Supreme Court is set to decide a major case on abortion regulations next year.

Amid this treacherous landscape, two key factors will help determine the future of abortion in the United States: the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and the outcome of ongoing efforts to make medication abortion (also called the abortion pill) easier for people to get.

Continued: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/2019/12/18/abortion-pills-safe-could-ease-access-crisis-women-column/2665854001/

18.12.2019