What an abortion hotline reveals about reproductive care after Roe

Linda Prine, a physician and co-founder of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline, describes the new realities for patients in states where the procedure is banned.

By Marin Cogan and Victoria Chamberlin
Feb 6, 2023

Linda Prine is a family physician and the co-founder of the Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline, which counsels women who want to use medication to self-manage their abortions. For women who need abortions in the states where the procedure is fully or partially banned, the medication, mifepristone and misoprostol, is often the best chance they have at receiving abortion care, particularly if they are unable to travel.

In 2020, the last year for which full data is available, medication abortions accounted for more than half of all abortions in the United States. While the FDA recently authorized pharmacies to carry the pills, and patients to receive the medication by mail, online pharmacies in the US still won’t sell or ship to states where self-managed abortion is illegal — meaning patients are often relying on overseas providers, which can take weeks.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/23580117/linda-prine-abortion-pills-medication-dobbs-roe

06.02.2023

Miscarriage and Abortion Hotline

misoprostol

self-managed abortion

United States

Health

Human Rights

USA – The Future of Abortion Pills Is on the Line

FEB. 3, 2023
By Andrea González-Ramírez

Since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, abortion pills have been a powerful tool for people to safely end a pregnancy on their own at home in the 14 states that have banned abortion. Abortion opponents and supporters are deeply invested in either cutting off or expanding access to the pills, and that tension has triggered a wave of legal challenges that could determine the future of medication abortion in the U.S.

“Back in the pre-Roe era, abortion was all done via procedure, which meant that if you could control the gatekeepers — the providers — then you could stop abortion in your state or stop a lot of it,” says Greer Donley, an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. “But now pills travel across borders all the time. It makes abortion really hard to control.”

Continued: https://www.thecut.com/2023/02/whats-happening-with-abortion-pills-in-the-courts.html

A Trump-appointed Texas judge could force a major abortion pill off the market

February 1, 2023
Sarah McCammon

A case before a federal judge in Texas could dramatically alter abortion access in the United States – at least as much, some experts say, as the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision last year, which overturned decades of abortion-rights precedent.

A decision is expected soon in the case challenging the Food and Drug Administration's approval more than 20 years ago of the abortion drug mifepristone, which a growing number of patients use to terminate pregnancies.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/01/1153593174/mifepristone-abortion-pill-federal-texas-lawsuit-restrict-access-nationwide

Opinion: This law from the 1870s could imperil abortion in blue states

Opinion by Mary Ziegler
Fri January 27, 2023

Since the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade in June, promising strategies have emerged to protect abortion rights in individual states. Some have begun to pass ballot initiatives to preserve or create state constitutional protection. Others have looked to legislatures to shield doctors and those who help people seeking abortion from potential consequences in conservative states.

These wins are hardly a silver bullet: not all states allow ballot initiatives and there are any number of states where majorities of voters seem to support abortion rights but are governed by legislators who want to ban the procedure—a result of deep partisan divides, gerrymandering and limits on access to the vote.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/27/opinions/abortion-at-risk-in-blue-states-ziegler-ctrp/index.html

27.01.2023

Featured

Opinion

abortion pills

Alliance Defending Freedom

‘Hot mess’: Abortion pills at pharmacies could face legal quagmires, especially in restrictive states

By Sarah Owermohle
Jan. 19, 2023

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators’ green light for pharmacists to dispense abortion pills is crashing into legal questions and simmering court battles.

The Food and Drug Administration earlier this month removed a longtime restriction that only doctors could dispense mifepristone, which is approved for abortions up to 10 weeks. The move opens the door for pharmacists to supply the drugs and shores up protections for mail orders, which have become an important channel for abortion access in the wake of Roe’s overturn last summer.

Continued: https://www.statnews.com/2023/01/19/abortion-pills-at-pharmacies-legal-quagmires/

This Trump Judge Could Effectively Ban the Abortion Pill

Matthew Kacsmaryk could revoke the FDA's approval of Mifepristone after anti-abortion groups filed a dubious lawsuit in Texas

BY TESSA STUART
JANUARY 18, 2023

THE ALLIANCE FOR Hippocratic Medicine does not have a robust online presence. Its website consists of a generic landing page that appeared in July, a month before the organization was legally incorporated in Amarillo, Texas. There’s no phone number, no email, no physical address, no board of directors listed. A single button, labeled “Learn more about AHM,” just reloads the page. According to records filed with the Texas Secretary of State, the group’s mailing address is located several states away, in Tennessee, but the decision to incorporate in Texas — in Amarillo, specifically — may prove critical in determining the fate of a lawsuit filed in November challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s 22-year approval of Mifepristone, a key component of the abortion pill.

Continued: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-judge-matthew-kacsmaryk-ban-abortion-pill-1234658423/

Reversing abortion drug’s approval would harm public interest, U.S. FDA says

By Brendan Pierson
Jan 17, 2023

(Reuters) - President Joe Biden's administration is urging a judge to reject a request by abortion opponents for a court order withdrawing federal approval for the drug used in medication abortions - which account for more than half of U.S. abortions - citing potential dangers to women seeking to end their pregnancies.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's filing to U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, made available online on Tuesday, came in a lawsuit in Texas by anti-abortion groups challenging the agency's approval of the drug mifepristone in 2000 for medication abortion.

Continued: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/reversing-abortion-drugs-approval-would-harm-public-interest-us-fda-says-2023-01-17/

Egyptian activists: We need to talk about abortion

Abortions are illegal in Egypt unless they are necessary to save a married woman's life. But that doesn't stop local women from having one. Egyptian society needs to acknowledge this, activists say

Diana Hodali
Jan 17, 2023

The memory of that day is still very painful for Noura. She was in Cairo's City Stars Mall when she suddenly felt cramps, accompanied by heavy bleeding: "I sat down on the toilet. I felt something heavy flowing from my uterus. I put my hand under me to catch the blood."

Noura is not using her real name here. She had an unplanned pregnancy at the age of 23 while in an extramarital relationship with a man called Khaled.

Continued: https://www.dw.com/en/egyptian-activists-we-need-to-talk-about-abortion/a-64408518

17.01.2023

Center for Egyptian Women's Legal Assistance

Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights

Ghadeer Ahmed Eldamaty

self-managed abortion

USA – The Inside Story of Bumbling Extremists’ Sad Crusade Against Abortion Pills

They used to blockade abortion clinics. Now they try to find the elusive headquarters of a pill company—and are targeting pharmacies next.

Sofia Resnick
Jan. 15, 2023

The Rev. Patrick Mahoney ditched his usual jeans and Converse for the dark blue suit and the brown shoes he considers bougie before boarding the Amtrak in Washington D.C., to New York City last March. He wanted to look presentable for the speech he’d be giving at the New York mayor’s interfaith anti-gun violence summit. But he also needed to blend in with the other suits as he later entered an office building in Midtown Manhattan off of Fifth Avenue. Briefcase in hand, the Presbyterian minister walked confidently past the empty lobby, mashed the elevator button, and slipped inside.

He had another mission, and it had nothing to do with guns.

Continued: https://www.thedailybeast.com/bumbling-extremists-sad-crusade-against-abortion-pills

USA – Danco Moves to Intervene in Lawsuit Challenging FDA Approval of Mifeprex®

Danco Laboratories

NEW YORK, Jan. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Danco Laboratories (Danco) filed a motion to intervene in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, a lawsuit in which several anti-abortion organizations and four individual physicians asked a federal court to immediately suspend FDA's approval of Mifeprex®. If the judge grants the plaintiffs' request, it may block the availability of Mifeprex® for medication abortion nationwide as early as mid-February. Prescribers across the United States may not be able to prescribe Mifeprex® to their patients, because the drug could not be sold or shipped to certified healthcare providers. The plaintiffs filed this suit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, on November 18, 2022.

At a time when people across the country are already struggling to obtain abortion care services, this lawsuit aims to compound and limit access to abortion even further through a blatant attempt to completely deny people access to medication abortion care in the U.S. The lawsuit is also a direct challenge to the FDA approval process for all pharmaceutical products. Danco joins this action to ensure that the FDA approval of Mifeprex® remains in force and people continue to have access to this safe and effective medication.

Continued: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/danco-moves-to-intervene-in-lawsuit-challenging-fda-approval-of-mifeprex-301721772.html

13.01.2023