By The Opinion
The 2022 Supreme Court ruling, Dobbs v. Jackson Girls folks’s Effectively Being Organization, which struck down a woman’s right to abortion after 50 years of legality by the Roe v. Wade, it wasn’t the last word. But as a result, abortion is illegal or nearly illegal in 14 states, especially in the Southern states. In California and New York, however, it is still licensed. Other states prohibit it after six weeks of gestation (before a third of women confirmed their pregnancy); others, at 12 weeks.
The only way out for many women is to order the mifepristone pill by mail after obtaining a prescription from a doctor via telemedicine.
Mifepristone together with misoprostol causes abortion if taken during the first 12 weeks. This is the method currently used in more than 60% of cases; the other methods are surgical.
Currently, one in four abortions is the result of consultations carried out by telemedicine. Therefore, the number of abortions after the 2022 ruling did not decrease as feared but rather increased, from approximately 80,000 per month to 95,000.
Both medicines were approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in September 2000.
Louisiana sued last year to ban this shipment and on April 30, a New Orleans-based appeals court agreed and reinstated an old FDA order requiring in-person medical consultation and that the pill be administered only in a clinic authorized to do so. That provision had already been repealed in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a new science-based regulation added during Joe Biden’s presidency.
Danco Laboratories, the pharmaceutical company that jointly produced mifepristone, immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, this – in fact only Judge Samuel Alito who was “on call” – temporarily invalidated the irascible court’s decision and restored access to that medication.
The requirement to visit a doctor establishes an unnecessary and burdensome barrier whose effect may be that these women desist from abortion, or, on the contrary, seek to do so in an illegal and dangerous manner. This disproportionately affects rural, poor and marginalized patients.
It is premature to claim victory for those who support a woman’s right to her own body. The supreme court’s pause is brief and will expire on May 11. A final decision will be made by the full Supreme Court.
Louisiana’s insistence has nothing to do with women’s health. It’s politics. It is part of the decades-long fight by conservative sectors to issue a national ban on abortion. Both pills are safe, as documented by decades of peer-reviewed research and 7.5 million users.
But the mailing ban is not limited to Louisiana. It is national, and also covers states where abortion is completely licensed.
In doing so, it misrepresents Louisiana’s argument that allowing mailing violated its own laws. Because banning mail delivery violates the rights of states that do allow abortion.
The situation could lead to the issue of abortion becoming key again, with only 181 days left until the crucial midterm elections, where Democrats aim to regain the reduction watch over the House and Republicans fight to retain a narrow majority.
Since 2022, 17 states have put the issue to a standard vote; In 14 of them, voters supported the right to abortion.
The Supreme Court should reject the appeals court ruling and Louisiana’s appeal; Otherwise, it will enable a new blow to the right to abortion and make the lives of millions of women in the country more difficult.
