WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court is now considering whether to restrict access to a common abortion medication, mifepristone.
The case involves the Food and Drug Administration’s decisions to expand when patients can take the drug and allow for prescriptions without an in-person visit.
Since the court reversed Roe v. Wade nearly two years ago, ending the right to an abortion, Kentucky patients seeking the procedure have had to travel out of state.
Tamarra Wieder, Kentucky state director of Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates, says how the justices rule in this case could have major implications for Kentuckians.
“You can manage your abortion care at home with mifepristone, and so when Kentuckians have to leave the state, it allows them to come back home and be surrounded by family, by friends, by their partners in the comforting setting of something that’s familiar than another state,” she said.
Kentucky is one of more than a dozen states banning abortions at all stages of pregnancy, but Wieder says the mifepristone case affects the entire country.
“This is another domino effect of Roe collapsing that nobody is safe,” she said. “We are all vulnerable to these attacks from abortion extremists. No matter what your zip code is, no matter where you live, a blue state, a red state, we are all in this together and we all need to fight back on these extremist laws.”
A group of doctors and other medical professionals argue the FDA did not consider safety concerns when it extended the time frame for taking mifepristone from seven weeks of pregnancy to 10 weeks, allowed medical professionals other than doctors to prescribe the drug and dispensed of a requirement for an in-person medical visit, opening the door for it to be mailed directly to patients.
The FDA and mifepristone maker Danco Laboratories insisted studies show mifepristone is safe and highly effective and that the agency did its homework before making the drug more accessible in recent years.
Addia Wuchner, executive director for KY Right to Life, provided a statement stressing the importance of medical evaluations by health care professionals.
She stated there were “pressing healthcare concerns stemming from today’s culture, the FDA, and the Biden Administration’s emphasis on facilitating easy access to terminate pregnancies and the lives of preborn children, particularly for women and minors,” and that she was hopeful “that the Justices after thorough review will reinstate the long-standing safety protocols.”
Ryan Chatelain contributed to this reporting.