About two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the court on Tuesday will revisit the issue of reproductive rights, this time contemplating whether to limit access to mifepristone, the first of two pills used in medication abortion.
Ahead of oral arguments and eventual ruling, doctors and patient advocates are expressing alarm about what might happen if the high court decides to tighten access to the drug.
Following the Dobbs ruling in 2022, 14 states now completely ban abortion, including medication abortion. A handful of other states ban delivering the drugs by mail and require patients to see a doctor in person before they can get a prescription for mifepristone. Medication abortions accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports access to abortion.
At issue Tuesday is whether the Food and Drug Administration disregarded important safety concerns when it expanded access to mifepristone beginning in 2016. Those eventual expansion include making it available from mail-order pharmacies.
Two studies cited in a Texas court ruling last year claimed mifepristone could be harmful. Those studies, however, were later retracted after the publication found “fundamental problems with the study design and methodology” as well as conflicts of interest.
“I’m very concerned,” said Dr. Kristyn Brandi, an OB-GYN in New Jersey and the former board chair for Physicians of Reproductive Health, an advocacy group for reproductive rights. “While there are alternatives that people could get if mifepristone is no longer available, it still means that most people seeking abortion are going to be impacted.”
It could set “an incredibly dangerous precedent,” said Kristen Moore, the director of the Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project. Putting the medication back “under lock and key” means “breaking the system,” she added.
The FDA first approved…
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