Abortion pills to become next battleground in US

The fight over reproductive rights is poised to shift to a new battleground: abortion-­inducing pills.

Abortion-rights activists outside the Supreme Court in Washington late on Sunday. Picture: Getty Images

As conservative US states rush to enact abortion bans following the Supreme Court’s decision, the fight over reproductive rights is poised to shift to a new battleground: abortion-­inducing pills.

With little other means at its disposal, the Biden administration will focus on expanding access to abortion pills for women living in states where the procedure is banned or restricted – while those states and powerful conservative groups are sure to mount legal challenges to prohibit their use.

Hours after the high court shredded 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights on Friday, President Joe Biden ordered health officials to make sure abortion pills were available to American women.

The pills, which can be used without significant risk to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks’ gestation, already account for half of all abortions carried out in the US.

On Saturday, some activists rallying outside the Supreme Court in Washington held up posters with instructions on where women could get abortion pills.

Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who runs Aid Access, an Austria-based organisation that provides abortion pills over the ­internet, is confident that the situation now faced by American women is not as tragic as it was 50 years ago, before the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that enshrined abortion rights in America.

“The abortion pills cannot be stopped,” Dr Gomperts said. “So there is always access to a safe abortion if a woman has an unwanted pregnancy.”

But after Friday’s ruling, that may be easier said than done.

The Food and Drug Administration approved the use of abortion pills two decades ago and last year allowed for them to be prescribed via telemedicine and ­delivered by mail. But their use in anti-abortion states remains a legal grey area and will likely ­become a frontline in future court battles over reproductive rights.  According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports access to abortion, 19 US states require that abortion pills be physically administered by a clinician, thus prohibiting their delivery by mail. And in states that ban all methods of abortion, women may be prohibited from seeking telehealth appointments with out-of-state doctors or foreign clinicians, like Dr Gomperts’ group.

As liberal states take action to facilitate abortions for women from other parts of the country, there are fears that conservative states may seek to prosecute health workers and advocacy groups involved in those efforts – and even the patients themselves.

Anticipating such plans, federal Attorney-General Merrick Garland on Friday warned that states cannot ban abortion pills authorised by the federal regulator “based on disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment about its safety and efficacy” since federal law pre-empts state law.

AFP