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As conservative US states hurry to enact abortion bans in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s shocking decision, the battle over reproductive rights in America is set to shift to a new front: abortion-inducing pills. With few other options, the Biden administration will look to expand access to abortion pills for women living in the state where the procedure is illegal or restricted, while those jurisdictions and powerful conservative groups will almost certainly file legal challenges to prevent their use.
On Friday, hours after the Supreme Court gutted 50 years of constitutional protections for abortion rights, President Joe Biden directed health officials to ensure that abortion pills were available to American women.
“I will do everything in my ability to protect a woman’s right in nations where the consequences of today’s decision will be felt,” he said in a televised address to the nation.
The pills, which can be used to end a pregnancy up to 10 weeks’ gestation without significant risk, already make up half of all abortions performed in the United States.
Demand is expected to rise further after 11 states, often in the Republican-led conservative South, passed laws restricting or outright prohibiting abortion, with others expected to follow suit.
Already on Saturday, activists rallying outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, held up posters with information on where women can obtain abortion pills, while others started chanting “My body, my choice.”
Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who runs Aid Access, an Austria-based organisation that provides abortion pills over the internet, believes that the situation now confronting American women is not as tragic as it was 50 years ago, well before landmark Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973, which enshrined abortion rights in America.
“The abortion pills cannot be paused,” Gomperts said over the phone to AFP. “As a result, if a woman has an unwanted pregnancy, she will always have access to a safe abortion.”
However, after Friday’s decision, that may be easier said than done.
A legal ambiguity
The FDA, America’s health state agency, approved the use of abortion pills two decades ago and allowed them to be prescribed via telehealth and delivered by mail last year.
However, their use in anti-abortion states remains illegal and will almost certainly become a front line in future legal wrangling over reproductive rights.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research organisation, 19 US states require abortion pills to be physically prescribed by a clinician, making mail delivery illegal.
In states where all methods of abortion are prohibited, women may be barred from seeking tele-health consultations with out-of-state physician or foreign clinicians, such as Gomperts’ group.
In this case, they may have to travel to a state that allows reproductive tele-health appointments and have the medication delivered to an out-of-state address.
