After reviewing decades-old guidelines regarding the administration of medication abortion, the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) announced it is lifting a medically unnecessary mandate known as the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone, the first drug taken in medication abortion’s two-drug protocol. Back in April, FDA temporarily lifted the requirement that mifepristone must be dispensed in person as part of an effort to reduce the spread of COVID-19.
As Kristen Moore, director of the Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project, recently explained, “Covid just gave us this kind of natural experiment to demonstrate that no, in fact, there is no medically justifiable reason to require patients to come into a clinic and pick up a pill that they are going to turn around and take at home.”
Now, that change will be permanent … though to be clear, a future administration could attempt to re-implement the restriction, and state laws can also restrict access.
From the New York Times:
The F.D.A.’s action means that medication abortion, an increasingly common method authorized in the United States for pregnancies up to 10 weeks gestation, will become more available to women who find it difficult to travel to an abortion provider or prefer to terminate a pregnancy in the privacy of their homes. It allows patients to have a telemedicine appointment with a provider who can prescribe abortion pills and send them to the patient by mail.
This is an important win for abortion access, especially given the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to reverse or further undermine Roe v. Wade when the Justices issue a ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization next spring.
We also know this doesn’t mean everyone will have access to care. There are still people in nineteen states that won’t share in this victory due to state-level in-person visit requirements or telehealth restrictions.
While we celebrate this victory as an important milestone in expanding abortion access and destigmatizing abortion care, we urge the FDA to lift all medically unnecessary restrictions on medication abortion.
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