Senate Democrats are pushing the Food and Drug Administration to lift restrictions on accessing medication abortions because many clinics are not performing the procedures due to pandemic lockdowns.
“People who need an abortion cannot delay care and should not needlessly risk coronavirus exposure,” Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, and Patty Murray told FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn Tuesday.
FDA regulations say the drug mifepristone used for medication abortions can only be dispensed in certain clinics or hospitals by healthcare professionals. The senators are asking the FDA to relax restrictions on accessing the medication so that women can undergo a medication abortion through telehealth consultations, followed by a trip to their local pharmacy to pick up the prescription.
The FDA approved the drug mifepristone in 2000 under the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy program that gives the agency authority to determine how the medication can be distributed. When taken with another medication, called misoprostol, mifepristone can end a pregnancy without the need for a surgical procedure.
“The medical community resoundingly agrees that any restrictions placed on the prescription and distribution of mifepristone are medically unnecessary,” they said. “And researchers at the University of California, San Francisco concluded that making mifepristone easily available in pharmacies would ‘likely improve access to abortion in the United States without increasing risks to women.’”
States such as Alabama and Texas have limited abortion as a nonessential procedure during the coronavirus pandemic. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday blocked a portion of the emergency ban instituted by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to allow medication abortions to continue. Similarly, a federal judge in Alabama issued a preliminary injunction Monday preventing the state from banning abortions as part of a wider ban on all elective medical procedures. District Judge Myron Thompson ruled that only abortion providers can decide whether the procedure can wait or not, according to the Associated Press.
