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In November 2022, a group of anti-abortion doctors and a dentist filed a lawsuit in Amarillo, Texas, challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone in 2000.
They asked the court to ban the medication nationwide. In their complaint, the plaintiffs argued that the FDA rushed approval of mifepristone in the 1990s under pressure from Democrats and abortion rights supporters and that the medication is unsafe for women. As a reporter for Ms.
magazine, I have closely covered abortion pills for years. I knew mifepristone was very safe and effective. In fact, abortion pills are safer than Tylenol, and six times safer than Viagra.
I suspected the anti-abortion plaintiffs got the history wrong too, so I went searching for an authoritative book on abortion pills in the U.S. There wasn’t one, so I decided to write this book — “Abortion Pills: US History and Politics” — newly available open access from Amherst College Press (doi.
org/10.3998/mpub.14469549).
In my research for the book, I discovered the exact opposite of what the anti-abortion plaintiffs claimed. Rather than fast-tracking mifepristone approval, FDA took years to approve the medication, much longer than for other drugs. Mifepristone was patented in France in 1980.
Two decades later, FDA approved mifepristone with highly unusual and unnecessary restrictions due in large part to anti-abortion pressure. FDA required clinicians to register with the drug distributor and dispense the medication themselves to patients in person over three appointments. Due to these burdensome requirements, most doctors declined to prescribe abortion pills and abortion access did not expand as many had hoped.
As a result, use of abortion pills in the United States lagged far behind countries in Europe and elsewhere in the world. The in-person dispensing requirement served the central strategy of the anti-abortion movement: limit abortion to isolated, stand-alone clinics, and then terrorize these clinics. In the United States, “pro-life” activists have committed 11 murders, 42 bombings, 200 arsons and 531 assaults against abortion providers and patients.
Anti-abortion activists surround the clinics and scream at women as they enter, attempting to scare them from accessing abortion health care. They stage fake clinics near real clinics in order to confuse, mislead and coerce people seeking abortion. In July 2020 due to the pandemic, a federal court required the FDA to lift the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone.
For the first time, abortion seekers could access abortion medications by telehealth and mail. Studies of telehealth abortion found it was safe and effective, as well as preferable to many women. The FDA relied on this research to permanently remove the in-person dispensing requirement in December 2021.
As a result, telehealth abortion clinics proliferated. Today in Massachusetts, we have 16 telehealth abortion clinics (listed at www.plancpills.
org), more than doubling the number of abortion providers in the state. Telehealth abortion has particularly increased access for people living in rural areas. Article continues after.
.. Cross|Word Flipart Typeshift SpellTower Really Bad Chess So how does telehealth abortion work? Access is as easy as filling out an online form.
Clinicians then screen patients for eligibility and mail pills to them. When patients use these pills, clinicians are available by text, phone or video consultation for support and follow-up care. One great thing about telehealth abortion care is that patients don’t have to take time off from work, find child care, travel long distances, cross gauntlets of protesters and spend hours at an abortion clinic to obtain abortion pills, which they use at home anyway.
They can privately and conveniently order the pills on their phone or computer. There is no need to put your feet up in stirrups; no need to talk to strangers about your private business. And the best part is the price.
Whereas brick-and-mortar clinics charge up to $700 for abortion pills, telehealth providers are much more affordable. Seven of the current telehealth abortion providers in the commonwealth charge $150 or less, with financial assistance available. The medications typically arrive by mail in a couple of days.
The convenience, affordability and privacy of telehealth abortion strikes at the heart of the anti-abortion movement’s central strategy of limiting abortion to stand-alone clinics that they then target with harassment and violence. No wonder the anti-abortion movement is so focused on trying to remove mifepristone from the market. Last June, the Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit challenging FDA regulation of mifepristone, but with Trump soon entering the White House — and in control of the FDA — abortion pill opponents’ chances of success in winning new restrictions on abortion pills will increase greatly.
However, my research revealed a long history of grassroots activists making abortion pills accessible to people who cannot access abortion through the formal medical system. I detail how extensive networks of community groups have developed in the last several years that are now providing free abortion pills to people in states banning abortion — networks that will continue and expand no matter what the Trump administration does. Carrie N.
Baker is a professor in the Program for the Study of Women and Gender at Smith College and a regular contributor to Ms. Magazine. She will speak about her book, “Abortion Pills: US History and Politics,” at Odyssey Bookstore in South Hadley on Feb.
12, 2025, 7 to 8:30 p.m. Register here: www.
odysseybks.com/event/carrie-baker-person..
