Abortion pill mifepristone still limited in some states

The abortion pill mifepristone is either banned or restricted to various degrees in 27 states despite a Supreme Court decision that — for now — maintains Food and Drug Administration regulations allowing quick access to the medication.

The Supreme Court, acting on an emergency basis, last week blocked lower federal court orders that had imposed severe restrictions on mifepristone even in some states where abortion stays legal.

The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit against the FDA by a coalition of doctors who oppose abortion. That group desires to force the agency to tug mifepristone from the market entirely. The Biden administration is opposing that effort.

The U.S. fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is now scheduled to listen to oral arguments within the case on May 17.

The side that loses on the appeals court is definite to ask the Supreme Court to take the case to make a final determination on the legality of the FDA rules.

The FDA rules upheld by the Supreme Court on Friday for several years have allowed women to acquire a mifepristone prescription through a telehealth appointment and to receive the medication by mail.

Patients previously were required by the FDA to acquire mifepristone in person from a health-care provider or take the medication under their supervision.

While the Supreme Court’s decision not less than temporarily maintains access to mifepristone in states that support broad access to abortion, it’ll have less or no impact in conservative states that banned the procedure since last summer, when the high court overturned the half-century-old federal constitutional right to abortion.

Mifepristone will remain largely unavailable in 13 states which have completely banned abortion.

Those states are Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia, based on the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit group that supports abortion access.

All of those states have exceptions that allow abortion when the lady’s life is in peril.

And Idaho, West Virginia and North Dakota have exceptions for pregnancies that result from rape and incest, although in North Dakota that exception applies only through the sixth week of pregnancy.

Fourteen other states have restrictions on mifepristone that transcend the FDA regulations temporarily upheld by the Supreme Court.

Those states require women to acquire the pill from a health care provider.

Those states are: Alaska, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Utah.

Florida, Georgia and Ohio ban abortion after six weeks before many ladies know they’re pregnant.

Mifepristone is FDA approved to terminate an early pregnancy as much as the tenth week of pregnancy.

There are pending federal lawsuits in North Carolina and West Virginia that seek to overturn those states’ mifepristone restrictions.