As conservative US states enact abortion bans after the Supreme Court’s bombastic decision, America’s fight for reproductive rights is poised to shift to a new battleground: pro-abortion 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 certainly have legal ones will take steps to ban their use.
Hours after the Supreme Court on Friday overturned 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights, President Joe Biden ordered health officials to ensure abortion pills are available to American women.
“I will do everything in my power to protect the rights of any woman in states where they are facing the consequences of today’s decision,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
The pills, which can be used without significant risk for abortion up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, already account for half of all abortions performed in the United States.
Demand is expected to continue to rise after 11 states, mostly in the Republican-led Conservative South, moved to severely restrict or outright ban abortion, while others are set to follow.
Earlier on Saturday, some activists gathered outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, held up placards directing them to where women can get abortion pills, while others chanted “My body, my choice.”
Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch doctor who runs Aid Access, an Austria-based organization that offers abortion pills over the internet, is confident the situation American women are facing now isn’t as tragic as it was 50 years ago the landmark 1973 Roe vs Wade ruling that enshrined abortion rights in America.
“The abortion pills cannot be stopped,” Gomperts told AFP in a telephone interview. “So there is always access to a safe abortion when a woman has an unwanted pregnancy.”
But after Friday’s verdict, that might be easier said than done.
– A legal gray area –
The Food and Drug Administration, America’s public health agency, approved the use of abortion pills two decades ago and last year allowed them to be prescribed via telemedicine and delivered through the mail.
However, its use in pro-abortion states remains a legal gray area and is likely to 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 abortion pills to be physically administered by a clinician, thus prohibiting their delivery through the mail.
And in states that ban all methods of abortion, women may be barred from seeking telephone appointments with overseas doctors or foreign clinicians like Gompert’s group.
In this case, they may need to travel to a state that allows reproductive telemedicine appointments and have the medication shipped to an out-of-state address.
But there is another complication.
A medical abortion requires two drugs: first, a dose of mifepristone is taken to block the hormones that support pregnancy; then, 24 to 48 hours later, misoprostol is taken to induce contractions.
That raises a question: Can an anti-abortion woman be prosecuted if she gets the first dose elsewhere but takes the second dose after returning home?
While liberal states are taking action to make abortion easier 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 these efforts — and even the patients themselves.
In anticipation of such plans, Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland warned Friday that states cannot ban federally approved abortion pills “due to disagreement with the FDA’s expert judgment on their safety and effectiveness” because federal laws pre-empt state laws.
As these lawsuits prepare to play out, anti-abortion advocate Savannah Craven said she and her colleagues will work to have all methods of abortion, including the pill, banned in the United States.
“I believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life. Life begins in the womb, life begins at conception,” she said.
But the argument fell flat for Elizabeth Kellogg and her husband Dan Reitz, who were protesting in the Supreme Court with their eight-month-old daughter Lorelei.
“If it were about life, they would be worried about the life of the birthing woman, they would be worried about life after birth,” Kellogg told AFP.
“Very little is being done to uphold the sanctity of life as proclaimed.”
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