Mexico’s help to American women who need abortions should inspire Canada

March 23, 2023
Christabelle Sethna, Lori A. Brown

When a draft of an upcoming United States Supreme Court decision curtailing legal abortion access in the U.S. leaked in May 2022, Karina Gould, Canada’s minister of families, children and social development, declared that Americans seeking abortions would be welcomed north of the border.

A month later the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that provided constitutional protection for legal abortion in the U.S. via its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling giving state legislatures the power to regulate the procedure.

Continued: https://theconversation.com/mexicos-help-to-american-women-who-need-abortions-should-inspire-canada-202117

The right is stealthily working to remove Americans’ access to abortion medication

A federal judge is poised to restrict mifepristone – even though the drug has been safely and effectively used in the US for more than 20 years

Moira Donegan
Thu 16 Mar 2023

This week a Republican-appointed federal judge weighed whether to grant an injunction that could remove mifepristone, the drug used in most American abortions, from the market nationwide. And the hearing almost happened in secret.

US district court judge Matthew Kacsmaryk had initially planned to keep Wednesday’s hearing in the case – in which a group of rightwing anti-abortion groups are suing the FDA to reverse its 20-year-old approval of mifepristone – quiet. In a conference call with lawyers for the anti-choice groups and the Department of Justice, Kacsmaryk asked attorneys not to disclose the existence of the hearing (“This is not a gag order,” he said repeatedly), and said that the event would only be made public late on Tuesday to minimize popular awareness. “It may even be after business hours.” The judge’s courtroom in Amarillo, Texas, is hours away from any major city. It was only because of a press leak that the hearing was known to the public at all.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/16/the-right-is-stealthily-working-to-remove-americans-access-to-abortion-medication

16.03.2023

Opinion

Alliance Defending Freedom

misoprostol-only abortions

Moira Donegan

self-managed abortion

Southern Poverty Law Center

USA – The Abortion Pill Case Is About Who Makes the Rules in America

BY SUSAN MATTHEWS
MARCH 15, 2023

Right now, the country is waiting on one judge in Texas to make a ruling. The ruling is supposed to determine whether access to a drug that, as part of a two-step process, causes an abortion will be curtailed. At least, ostensibly, that is what the ruling is about—whether the Food and Drug Administration was wrong to approve this drug when it did so 22 years ago. This ruling will certainly have serious, dramatic effects on access, and therefore on real women’s lived lives. ….

But this case is not really about whether mifepristone remains accessible, and FDA-approved. What this case is actually about is the same thing every abortion battle over the past five decades has been about: Who has power in America?

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/ignore-judge-matthew-kacsmaryk-abortion-pill-ruling.html

15.03.2023

Opinion

Food and Drug Administration

Trump-appointed judge limits information on medication abortion lawsuit

The suit could determine whether US women can access abortion drugs, but judge is trying to limit disruptions and protests

Edward Helmore in New York
Mon 13 Mar 2023

A judge in Texas overseeing a lawsuit in which a conservative group is challenging the legality of the abortion drug mifepristone scheduled the first hearing in the case for Wednesday, but directed that court officials not make the timing public until the evening before.

According to sources cited by the Washington Post, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a US district court judge in Amarillo appointed by Donald Trump in 2019, ordered the hearing kept out of the court docket as a way to try to limit disruptions and protests, and also asked that lawyers arguing the case do not disclose information.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/13/federal-judge-limits-information-medication-abortion-lawsuit

13.03.2023

News

Alliance Defending Freedom

Carl Tobias

Danco Laboratories

Food and Drug Administration

The Latest Attack on the Abortion Pill Is Forty Years in the Making

If a Texas lawsuit prevails, mifepristone will no longer be available anywhere in the nation, even in states where abortion is legal.

By Sue Halpern, The New Yorker
March 9, 2023

In 1987, Ms. magazine asked me to write about RU-486, a new medication that caused the uterus to expel a fertilized egg before it could gestate. It wasn’t a contraceptive, but it wasn’t what most people considered an abortion, either. At the time, anti-abortion campaigners were brandishing ultrasound images that purported to show fetuses crying out in pain as they were being surgically removed. RU-486, which was developed in France but not yet available in the United States, threatened to stymie this tactic: there would be no fetal development to flaunt. Even the president of the National Right to Life Committee acknowledged that there was little P.R. value in images of what appeared to be menstruating women. This disarming of the pro-life movement, and the drug’s seemingly benign effect, I wrote, “may serve to decimate the ranks of abortion foes.” Étienne-Émile Baulieu, the primary developer of RU-486, which is better known as mifepristone, was even more hopeful. With this drug, he declared, abortion “should more or less disappear as a concept, as a fact, as a word in the future.”

Continued: https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-latest-attack-on-the-abortion-pill-is-forty-years-in-the-making

Getting abortion pills into Ukraine during a war meant having to be creative

March 8, 2023
Gregory Warner
6-minute listen with transcript

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the supply of abortion pills dwindled. NPR reporters follow a secret effort to resupply doctors and help women with pregnancies made complicated by war.

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
This story takes us to the early days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and a covert effort to resupply Ukrainian doctors with abortion pills. The story comes from our podcast, Rough Translation. Because of the secrecy of the doctor's mission and because of medical privacy, most of the people in this story are referred to by just one name or, in one case, no name at all. Here is Rough Translation host Gregory Warner and reporter Katz Laszlo.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/08/1161859625/getting-abortion-pills-into-ukraine-during-a-war-meant-having-to-be-creative

08.03.2023

Interviews/Podcasts

abortion pills

Galina Maistruk

International Planned Parenthood Federation

California will cut ties with Walgreens over the company’s plan to drop abortion pills

March 7, 2023
EMILY OLSON

Last week, Walgreens said it will not distribute abortion pills in states where Republican officials have threatened legal action. Now a blue state says it will cut ties with the pharmacy giant because of the move.

"California won't be doing business with @walgreens – or any company that cowers to the extremists and puts women's lives at risk," Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote in a tweet yesterday with a link to news coverage of Walgreen's decision.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/07/1161590750/california-walgreens-mifepristone-abortion-pill

07.03.2023

News

California Pharmacists Association

Walgreens mifepristone

Actually, One Texas Judge Is Not the Final Decision-Maker on Medication Abortion

One district judge’s ruling does not have to affect the entire country.

BY DAVID S. COHEN, GREER DONLEY, AND RACHEL REBOUCHE
FEB 28, 2023

All eyes in the fight over reproductive rights and justice have been focused on a federal judge in Amarillo, Texas. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will soon decide a case involving the first drug in a medication abortion, mifepristone. Though the case makes wholly unpersuasive arguments, undermined by the facts and the evidence, plaintiffs filed in this specific court because Kacsmaryk is one of the most conservative judges on the federal bench and has an explicit and documented animus toward abortion. The expectation is that he will do everything in his power to end medication abortion as we know it. Because states like Texas have already banned abortion (including medication abortion), the deep fear is that his ruling could affect abortion care even in states where it remains legal.

But we would like to offer some clarification here. Because despite the barrage of predictions that this case could ban mifepristone and take it off the market, there are several basic legal principles suggesting that Judge Kacsmaryk’s power is limited and that a ruling for the plaintiffs will not necessarily change much at all with medication abortion.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/texas-judge-abortion-case-actually-limited-mifepristone.html

Japan moves toward approving abortion pill in major shift

KATHLEEN BENOZA
Feb 27, 2023

Japan is moving closer to approving an abortion pill for the first time, a step that could offer women more options amid calls for progress in gender equality, with a secondary panel at the health ministry expected to make a decision as early as March.

In January, an initial advisory panel at the health ministry approved the production and sale of the drug, Mefeego. It still needs approval from a separate panel at the ministry as it collects public comments online until Tuesday, with the final decision to be made by the health minister.

Continued: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/02/27/national/japan-abortion-pill-debate/

27.02.2023

Professional Women’s Coalition for Sexuality and Health

Washington state attorney general says FDA rules on abortion drug are unreasonable

February 25, 2023
MICHEL MARTIN, GURJIT KAUR
8-Minute Listen with Transcript

Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson says he is suing the Food and Drug Administration because the restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone are "entirely unreasonable and not medically necessary."

Ferguson, who spoke with NPR's All Things Considered on Saturday, is one of a dozen Democratic attorneys general who filed a lawsuit accusing the federal agency of excessively regulating the drug.

Continued: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/25/1159565357/washington-state-attorney-general-says-fda-rules-on-abortion-drug-are-unreasonab

25.02.2023