The JAMA Outcomes: An Empirical Study of Online Abortion Pill Distribution in the Six Months Following the Overturn of Wade

The JAMA study evaluated data from overseas telemedicine organizations, online vendors and networks of community volunteers that generally obtain pills from outside the United States. The study showed that in the six months following the overturn of Wade, the average number of abortion pills given to women soared from 1,400 to 5,900.

The telemedicine organizations in the study evaluated prospective patients using written medical questionnaires, issued prescriptions from doctors who were typically in Europe and had pills shipped from pharmacies in India, generally charging about $100. Community networks typically asked for some information about the pregnancy and either delivered or mailed pills with detailed instructions, often for free.

Online vendors, which supplied a small percentage of the pills in the study and charged between $39 and $470, generally did not ask for women’s medical history and shipped the pills with the least detailed instructions. Vendors in the study were vetted by Plan C and found to be providing genuine abortion pills, Dr. Aiken said.

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A Supreme Court Decision Deciding the Future of Medication Abortion and Lifesaving Care for Pregnancy Emergency Care: A Commentary on FDA’s Decision

Drugmakers are worried about the case. Hundreds of drug company executives signed a letter last year in support of FDA’s authority to regulate medications without judicial interference. Many also submitted an amicus brief.

The FDA and Danco said that the challengers aren’t actually harmed by the prescription rules and that the FDA followed correct procedure and scientific evidence in making its decisions.

Less than two years after the case was argued, abortion is once again being heard by the Supreme Court. In the next month, the justices will hear arguments in two high-stakes cases that may shape the future of access to medication abortion and to lifesaving care for pregnancy emergencies. These cases make clear that Dobbs did not settle the question of abortion in America — instead, it generated a new slate of questions. Some in the anti-abortion movement hold that a fetus is an individual who has the same rights and protections as any other person.

Many abortion providers are prepared to switch to another regimen, using only misoprostol, but it requires more doses, which come with more side effects. And Grant says that regimen might be the next target if the challengers succeed in restricting mifepristone. She thinks the next move on the chessboard could be to make these drugs unavailable.

In August of last year, the Fifth Circuit court ruled that the FDA should modify its rules for prescribers. That would dramatically cut down on the number of people able to access this medication, for several reasons. It would shut down telemedicine access to the medication and could undo retail pharmacies’ new ability to dispense it.

It would also make it only available until seven weeks of pregnancy, instead of 10 weeks under the current rules, along with other changes. (Globally, the medication can be used as late as 12 weeks.)

Even though the difference between seven and ten weeks is not a lot, nearly half of medication abortions happen after seven weeks according to the CDC. Melissa Grant, COO of carafem, which runs abortion clinics and provides telemedicine abortions, explains that’s because the earliest someone might find out they’re pregnant is at four weeks.

A seven-week limit lets people decide what option is best for them, potentially involve people that they care about in their lives, and then go and get an abortion if they so choose. “That’s a rapid turnaround.”

Can a miscarriage case be ruled against due to immoral use? Dr. Michelle Banks and the U.S. Supreme Court

When someone has a miscarriage, doctors often prescribe the same mifepristone plus misoprostol regimen. The treatment can potentially ward off weeks of waiting, worrying and bleeding.

For instance, Michelle Brown told NPR that after she learned she was miscarrying, she was nervous she would start bleeding on her long commute to work in Louisiana, where there was no safe place to pull over. She could plan ahead to be comfortable at home with her husband.

“I think there’s been to some degree a false sense of security created by ballot initiatives Mary Ziegler is a law professor at the University of California-Davis. People think that if you voted for a ballot initiative or live in a blue state you don’t have to care about what happens in the Supreme Court.

Dr. Banks said that the case was about one medicine, but it really could be any medicine.

The FDA regulatory process is costly and rigorous, but it’s predictable, she said. If it can be undone by plaintiffs who morally object to a medicine and friendly federal courts, that predictability goes out the window, she said.

The uncertainty could affect investors and drug companies and “could put innovation for new drugs and much, much needed therapies for patients, not just in the United States, but globally, at fundamental risk,” Banks said.

“I think that’s why the pharmaceutical industry is nervous,” Ziegler says. If this could happen with a drug that has been controversial, what would prevent anyone from doing it with every other drug?

The rules included in the Comstock Act could cover birth control, abortion pills, and any equipment used for abortion and that could affect abortion care in the U.S.

The law against sending things for immoral use was enacted in the 19th century. The plaintiffs in this case use Comstock in one of their arguments, treating it as a straightforward statute and not a defunct law.

The case against Mifepristone: Alito re-joinding the advocacy of women and preventing emergency room visits in the United States

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has claimed that Mifepristone endangers women and leads to emergency room visits. The study which was supposed to back up their claims was pulled from the market after it was found to be incorrect.

In his majority opinion in the case overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito insisted that the high court was finally settling the vexed abortion debate by returning the “authority to regulate abortion” to the “people and their elected representatives.”