Can the Supreme Court Judge’s Standing Benchmark on Abortion Control Rule Changes the Access of Healthcare Providers to Prescription Drugs?
If the justices side with the antiabortion activists seeking to restrict access to abortion care it could lead to a decrease in the availability of abortion care. The FDA approval of drugs such as HIV drugs and contraceptives may be thrown out by a judge if they are found to have been approved without follow-up studies. It might cause companies to be less willing to invest in research into new drugs because they could be pulled from the market.
The former FDA Commissioners argued that a precedent set by this case could be used to challenge a competitor’s FDA approval. Or, they write, “organizations representing patients who experience rare adverse events could challenge FDA’s risk-benefit analyses and attempt to bar access to safe and effective remedies for others who need them.”
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear oral arguments in a challenge to abortion pill access across the country, including in states where abortion is legal. The case is the most consequential fight for reproductive health care access since the Supreme Court ruled in favour of abortion rights.
In the US, pills have been the leading abortion method in recent years. More than six in 10 abortions in 2023 were carried out via medication, according to new data from the Guttmacher Institute. Since rules around telehealth were relaxed during the Covid-19 pandemic, many patients seeking medication abortions have relied on virtual clinics, which send abortion pills by mail. And it keeps getting more popular: Hey Jane, a prominent telemedicine provider, saw demand increase 73 percent from 2022 to 2023. It recorded another 28 percent spike comparing data from January 2023 to January 2024.
“We use this medication in lots of different ways and for lots of different care,” including for miscarriage and pregnancy loss, says Dr. Jamila Perritt, an OB-GYN in Washington D.C. who’s the President of Physicians for Reproductive Health. “If this medication is restricted or banned completely, no one will be able to get access to it with any ease,” she says.
It would also make it only available until seven weeks of pregnancy, instead of 10 weeks under the current rules, along with other changes. The medication can be used as late as 12 weeks.
Some people think the difference between seven and 10 weeks is small, but according to the CDC, half of medication abortions happen after seven weeks. Four weeks is the earliest someone might be able to find out they are pregnant, according to the COO of carafem.
The seven-week limit will allow people to get a positive pregnancy test, look for an appointment, look for possible assistance with the costs of it, and then actually go and do it. “That’s a rapid turnaround.”
Mifepristone and misoprostol: the urgency of the lawsuits after the Supreme Court’s ruling on abortion rights
When someone has a miscarriage, doctors often prescribe the same mifepristone plus misoprostol regimen. The treatment can prevent waiting, worrying, and bleeding.
After she discovered she was miscarrying, the woman told NPR she was concerned she would have to start bleeding if she didn’t pull over. Taking mifepristone allowed her to plan ahead so she could be comfortable at home with her then-fiancé.
Since the Supreme Court ruled in favour of abortion rights nearly two years ago, a number of states have made changes that restrict the procedure while others have made changes that do not affect access.
“This case is about mifepristone right now – it’s about one medicine, but it really could be any medicine, ” Dr. Amanda Banks, a consultant who signed the amicus brief, said in a press conference this month organized by the ACLU.
She said the FDA regulatory process is expensive and long, but that it’s predictable. 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. “They’re saying, if this could happen with mifepristone, which has a very, very low complication rate and which is very, very well studied because it’s been controversial, then what would stop anyone from doing it with every other drug?”
This case could affect everyone in the country, according to legal scholars like Ziegler. “You have, lurking in the background, the possibility that the Comstock Act is going to be reinvented as an abortion ban,” she says.
The mailing of things for immoral use is against the law 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.
Abortion is too effective to be Ignored: Comment on “An independent review of a study in support of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine“
The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine has been saying for a long time that the drug is dangerous and leads to emergency room visits for women. The study that was cited to back up the claims was found to be incorrect by an independent review.
According to Julie Kay, the director of the advocacy group Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, telemedicine abortion is too effective to be Ignored.