USA – New lawsuits target state restrictions on abortion pills

Wed, January 25, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supporters of abortion rights filed separate lawsuits Wednesday challenging two states' abortion pill restrictions, the opening salvo in what’s expected to a be a protracted legal battle over access to the medications.

The lawsuits argue that limits on the drugs in North Carolina and West Virginia run afoul of the federal authority of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has approved the abortion pill as a safe and effective method for ending pregnancy.

Continued: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/lawsuits-target-state-restrictions-abortion-171454321.html

The Abortion Pill’s Secret Money Men

The untold story of the private equity investors behind Mifeprex—and their escalating legal battle to cash in post-Dobbs.

HANNAH LEVINTOVA
Mother Jones, MARCH+APRIL 2023 ISSUE

In 1993, a group of activists rented a warehouse in suburban Westchester County, New York. It was smaller than they’d hoped and had limited ventilation, but the two other locations they’d tried to rent belonged to universities and required jumping through too many bureaucratic hoops—the exact sort of paper trail this group was trying to avoid.

Led by renowned pro-choice activist Lawrence Lader, their goal was to replicate RU-486, the revolutionary abortion pill developed in the 1980s by French manufacturer Roussel-Uclaf—which was unwilling to navigate American abortion politics to bring the pill stateside.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/01/abortion-pill-mifepristone-mifeprex-roe-dobbs-private-equity/

Japan’s 1st Oral Abortion Option up for Approval

The Yomiuri Shimbun
January 22, 2023

Experts on Friday will deliberate whether to approve an oral, two-drug combination to induce an abortion for the first time in Japan, the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has announced.

In Japan, the practice of abortion has been limited to surgery, and if the ministry’s expert committee approves the oral combination, it may provide a less burdensome option for women.

Continued: https://japannews.yomiuri.co.jp/society/general-news/20230122-85729/

22.01.2023

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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/

The Father of the Abortion Pill

The 96-year-old scientist who came up with an idea for an “unpregnancy pill” decades ago has led an eventful life, from his teenage days in the French Resistance to his friendships with famous artists.

By Pam Belluck
Jan. 17, 2023

When the idea struck him, nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Étienne-Émile Baulieu believed it could be revolutionary. Creating a pill that could abort a pregnancy would transform reproductive health care, he thought, allowing women to avoid surgery, act earlier and carry out their decisions in private.

“When science meets women’s cause, it is irresistible,” Dr. Baulieu, 96, a French endocrinologist and biochemist often called the father of the abortion pill, said on a recent Sunday afternoon in his apartment in a century-old building a short walk from the Eiffel Tower.

Continued: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/health/abortion-pill-inventor.html

Australia – The game-changing plan to cut barriers to medical abortion

By Nell Geraets
January 16, 2023

A push is under way to make medical abortion more accessible across Australia by cutting down the regulatory barriers around who can prescribe the pill combination and where it can be stocked.

Non-profit pharmaceutical company MS Health – the private sponsor behind medical abortion in Australia – submitted applications to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in December that proposed expanding the number of health practitioners eligible to prescribe the medication, and removing the requirements for recertification and pharmacist registration.

Continued: https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-game-changing-plan-to-cut-barriers-to-medical-abortion-20230108-p5cb2i.html

USA – The Inevitable Prosecutions of Women Who Obtain Abortions

The attorney general of Alabama finally went where the logic of the anti-abortion movement has long pointed.

BY DAVID DAYEN
JANUARY 16, 2023

Back when Donald Trump was just a presidential candidate, he was asked by Chris Matthews if he thought abortions should be dealt with under the law, like any other crime. He replied, “There has to be some form of punishment,” specifically saying he meant that the women who obtained abortions should be punished. After his handlers realized what he’d said, he quickly reversed himself, saying that if abortion were banned through the courts or legislation, the punishment should be reserved for “the doctor or any other person performing this illegal act upon a woman.”

Some Republicans still draw the line there, reserving any legal action over abortions to those who conduct them. … But this don’t-punish-the-woman line is no longer unapproachable.

Continued: https://prospect.org/health/2023-01-16-prosecution-women-mifepristone-abortion-alabama/

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

The FDA’s Step Forward on Medication Abortion Isn’t Even Close to Enough

Incremental progress will not defeat conservatives’ all-out war on abortion pills.
BY DAVID S. COHEN, GREER DONLEY, AND RACHEL REBOUCHE
JAN 05, 2023

On Tuesday, the FDA announced the process by which retail pharmacies could become certified to dispense mifepristone, the first drug in the medication abortion regimen. The agency’s decision filled in the details of an announcement made in December of 2021 that patients would no longer be required to go to a clinic to pick up medication abortion and that certified pharmacies would be allowed to dispense it.

This action may be a step forward, but it is far too tepid to fight back against the war that the anti-abortion movement is waging against abortion pills. Meeting this moment will require much more.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/01/medication-abortion-pills-fda-pharmacies.html

05.01.2023

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USA – FDA says it will greenlight pharmacies to fill prescriptions for abortion pill

Pharmacies would have to become certified and a prescription is still needed.

By Anne Flaherty
January 3, 2023

The abortion pill mifepristone is safe enough that retail pharmacies can begin dispensing it so long as a certified health care provider prescribes the drug and if that pharmacy meets certain requirements, according to new rules published Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

If pharmacies jump on board, the FDA action could dramatically expand access to the drug in states where it's already legal. Doctors, for example, might be more willing to get certified to prescribe the drug because they would no longer have to stock it themselves and could write a prescription much as they would any other medication.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fda-greenlight-pharmacies-fill-prescriptions-abortion-pill-agency/story?id=96115469