USA – How doctors will handle abortions if mifepristone telehealth access is banned

One in four abortions in the U.S. rely on telehealth access to mifepristone, but antiabortion activists want to ban it

May 27, 2026
By Meghan Bartels, edited by Tanya Lewis

After a tense few weeks during which U.S. courts twice revoked and reinstated telehealth access to the abortion pill mifepristone, the drug remains available without an in-office appointment—for now. But doctors and policy experts worry that uncertainty and any future rollback in access will make things harder for people seeking to end a pregnancy and place added pressure on the health care system.

Since 2022, when the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade, antiabortion proponents have focused on mifepristone. They claim, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, that the drug is unsafe. First approved in the U.S. in 2000, mifepristone is currently used here in combination with the drug misoprostol up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-doctors-will-handle-abortions-if-mifepristone-telehealth-access-is-banned/

27.05.2026

abortion pills

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists

Dr. Ushma Upadhyay

Food and Drug Administration

Mary Ziegler

mifepristone

misoprostol

misoprostol-only abortions

Rachel Jensen

US Supreme Court

Trump Thought He’d Escaped the Abortion Trap

Now the Supreme Court is facing a blockbuster case that threatens to spin out of control.

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
May 12, 2026

By all accounts, President Donald Trump really, really did not want abortion to become a major issue this election year. But here we are, six months before the midterms, and abortion pills are back at the Supreme Court, as the state of Louisiana and abortion drug manufacturers ask to fast-track oral arguments in what is shaping up to be a blockbuster case. Conservatives are invoking the Comstock Act. And Trump’s Food and Drug Administration has been AWOL, while its top official has been forced to resign.

The swift escalation of the showdown between Louisiana and the FDA over telemedicine abortion highlights just how little control Trump has over the abortion issue—both in terms of the timeline and the outcome. Meanwhile, the case is sparking confusion, uncertainty, and dread among patients, providers, and advocates across the US.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/mifepristone-scotus-trump-thought-hed-escaped-the-abortion-trap/

USA – A Right-Wing Court Just Moved to Choke Off Abortion by Mail

A sweeping decision threatens to unravel one of the most important pathways to care post-Dobbs.

Nina Martin, Mother Jones
May 1, 2026

A federal appeals court packed with conservatives has handed abortion opponents a major victory against the US Food and Drug Administration, reinstating an in-person dispensing requirement for the abortion medication mifepristone and shutting down telemedicine providers—at least temporarily—from prescribing the abortion pill across the US.

In a 3-0 order issued Friday afternoon, the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals granted Louisiana’s request for an injunction against FDA rule changes from 2023 that have allowed blue-state telehealth providers to send mifepristone to thousands of patients every month in states where abortion is banned. Abortion pills now account for almost two-thirds of abortions nationwide.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/05/a-right-wing-court-just-moved-to-choke-off-abortion-by-mail/

Pregnancy is increasingly criminalized in the United States

‘In a post-Dobbs world, every pregnancy loss is potentially suspect,’ said Dana Sussman, senior vice president of Pregnancy Justice.

January 21, 2026
By Rebekah Sager

Imagine the trauma of not only losing a pregnancy to a miscarriage, but then being arrested, jailed, and charged following the loss. According to legal scholars, the number of pregnant people being charged with crimes in connection with miscarriages, along with those charged in connection with abortions, is increasing.

In the fall of 2024, Pregnancy Justice, a national advocacy organization that defends the civil and legal rights of pregnant people, released a study documenting 210 pregnancy-related criminal cases brought in the two years that followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June 2022 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that reversed Roe v. Wade. A year later, the organization updated the figure to 412 pregnancy-related criminal cases. Many of those cases concerned substance abuse during pregnancies that resulted in live births.

Continued: https://pennsylvaniaindependent.com/reproductive_rights/pregnancy-miscarriage-abortion-criminal-charges-fetal-personhood-laws-loss/

21.01.2026

Commentary

Criminalizing Pregnancy

criminalizing women

criminalizing women for miscarriage

USA – The Abortion Pill Is Safe. Scientists Fear an FDA Investigation Will Ignore Science

Some scientists are concerned that the Trump administration will use “junk science” when reviewing mifepristone’s safety record

October 30, 2025
By Liz Szabo

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., recently announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will launch a review of the safety of the abortion pill, mifepristone. Health researchers say they’re concerned that the review will be politicized and based on flawed reports. More than 100 studies published over the past few decades have shown that the drug, which was approved by the FDA in 2000, is safe and effective at ending a pregnancy.

Given Kennedy’s history of misrepresenting scientific evidence about vaccines, autism and Tylenol, some scientists say they worry that the health secretary will base the FDA report on unreliable sources.

Continued: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fda-is-investigating-the-abortion-pill-mifepristone-despite-decades-of/

Volunteers rush to send abortion pills to US women in need as ‘war between the states’ looms

Massachusetts abortion project pushes for access across country as controversial shield laws are put to legal test
Carter Sherman
Sat 26 Apr 2025
Each of the volunteers – five women and one man – have a unique role in the assembly line. One volunteer drops slim, orange boxes of mifepristone, the first drug typically used in a medication abortion, into the envelopes, while another volunteer adds green-capped bottles of the second drug, misoprostol. A few volunteers add brochures on topics such as how to use abortion pills or what to do if a woman suspects she has an ectopic pregnancy. Finally, one volunteer drops small purple cards into each envelope. They all bear the same handwritten message: “We wish you the best.” The cards are signed with a swooping heart and a nondescript name: “the Map”, or the Massachusetts Medication Abortion Access Project.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/26/abortion-clinic-pills-shield-laws

USA – How idea of charging women with murder infiltrated the anti-abortion movement

‘Abolitionists’ have migrated out of the fringes and moved toward the center of movement alongside Republicans’ penchant for punishment

Carter Sherman
Wed 23 Apr 2025

So far this year, lawmakers in at least 12 states have introduced legislation that would treat fetuses as people and leave women who have abortions vulnerable to being charged with homicide – a charge that, in several of these states, carries the death penalty.

Once seen as politically toxic, this kind of legislation has become more popular in the years since Roe v Wade fell, erasing the national right to abortion. This likely comes as no surprise to Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law and one of the foremost commentators on the US abortion wars. The anti-abortion movement, she writes in her new book Personhood: The New Civil War Over Reproduction, has really “always been a fetal-personhood movement” – one that is so emboldened, it is increasingly unconcerned with public opinion or even democratic norms.

Continued; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/23/anti-abortion-fetal-personhood

Does a Fetus Have Constitutional Rights?

“Personhood,” by Mary Ziegler, is a field guide to the seemingly boundless tactical resourcefulness of the anti-abortion movement.

By Margaret Talbot
April 14, 2025

In the first two years after the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, the number of abortions performed annually in the United States went up. On the face of it, this might seem perplexing. After all, many states seized the opportunity presented by the Court’s 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to enact daunting new restrictions on abortion: twelve adopted near-total bans, and four more imposed gestational limits of six weeks, a point at which many people may not yet realize they are pregnant. Yet, suddenly, the U.S. was seeing an increase in abortions—from about nine hundred and thirty thousand in 2020 to more than a million in 2023. The best explanation for this apparent paradox was that providers and activists in states where abortion was still accessible devoted considerable energy and resources into making it more so. This was especially true for medication abortions provided via telehealth. In December, 2021, the F.D.A. had lifted its requirement that mifepristone be prescribed in person; the number of virtual clinics, which assess a patient’s eligibility online or by phone, and mail out the medications, proliferated.

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/04/21/personhood-mary-ziegler-book-review

USA – Lawmakers Are Trying to Hold Crisis Pregnancy Centers to Account

Post-Dobbs, the GOP has given them millions in taxpayer dollars.

Laura C. Morel, Mother Jones
April 10, 2025

Last month, during an Indiana state legislative hearing, Republican Sen. Jeff Raatz from Richmond, a small city in the eastern part of the state, discussed a resolution he filed declaring that the state’s General Assembly “strongly supports pregnancy care centers in their unique, positive contributions to the individual lives of women, men, and babies—both born and unborn,” the Indiana Capital Chronicle reported. “We have hospitals in rural Indiana that have no OB-GYNs,” Raatz said during the session. “Why not have an innocent individual stand alongside someone and help them make decisions and connect them with resources?” Abortion is banned in Indiana with limited exceptions.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/lawmakers-are-trying-to-hold-crisis-pregnancy-centers-to-account/

A new Texas bill is coming after online abortion pills

The 43-page measure, introduced Friday, may be the most meaningful attempt this year to block the ordering and mailing of medication abortion.

March 14, 2025

Republican state legislators unveiled a new effort on Friday to derail the health care network that has helped people in Texas continue accessing abortion years after the Lone Star State banned the procedure.

The 43-page bill targets tech companies that allow patients to order abortion pills online and nonprofit funds that help them travel out of state for care and gives new power to the state’s attorney general to prosecute abortion providers. Introduced by influential state legislators in the state’s House and Senate and backed by Texas Right to Life, a leading anti-abortion group, this is the most sweeping abortion bill introduced in the state since the fall of Roe v. Wade almost three years ago.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2025/03/texas-bill-abortion-pills/