Health providers will be permitted temporarily to mail abortion-inducing medications to patients without seeing them in person, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday, reversing a Trump administration policy.
“By halting enforcement of the in-person dispensing requirement during the COVID-19 pandemic, the FDA is recognizing and responding to the available evidence—which has clearly and definitively demonstrated that the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone is unnecessary and restrictive,” said the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, a medical organization representing roughly 90% of gynecologists and obstetricians in the United States.
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Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock told the ACOG in a letter published Monday that the agency had not found evidence to support the rule that women have to see their healthcare providers in person to be prescribed the abortion medication mifepristone. The ACOG pressured the FDA to repeal that guidance last year, arguing that making women go to their doctors’ offices in person put them at risk of being infected with the coronavirus.
The rule change is not meant to be permanent, and the FDA did not say when it would revert back to a ban on mailing the medication.
“ACOG has for years advocated for the FDA to remove the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, given that… the restrictions were more burdensome than those placed on medications with similar safety profiles, or even those with greater risks,” the organization said.
The combination of taking mifepristone and another drug called misoprostol about 24 hours later is the most common medication abortion regimen and was approved by the FDA in 2000. The FDA has deemed it safe and effective for women within the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, with a 0.4% risk of major complications and an associated mortality rate of less than 0.001%, according to a 2012 report published in the medical journal Contraception.
