Causes.com
| 5.14.24
Shield Laws Keep Abortion Pill Access Steady, Research Finds
Do you support increased abortion access?
What's the story?
- New research found that since the fall of Roe v. Wade in 2022, new "shield laws" have allowed abortion pill access to remain steady.
- Researchers from #WeCount, a project by the Society of Family Planning, are studying the impact of abortion restrictions following the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Their newest report focuses on the effects of shield laws in Colorado, Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and Washington, which protect medical providers from legal repercussions when shipping abortion pills to patients in states facing abortion bans.
- Co-chair of #WeCount, Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, emphasized how shield laws are allowing "a huge number of people [to get] abortions in a way that didn't exist just a few years ago." Upadhyay continued:
"It's unbelievable, and it's a method of obtaining an abortion that most people in the US still don't even know is available."
The results
- The researchers found that, despite the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the number of abortions performed within the U.S. healthcare system rose, even excluding abortions offered under shield laws.
- In 2023, medical professionals provided 86,000 abortions monthly in states that allowed the procedures. In states that have six-week or near-total abortion bans, an average of 5,800 abortions through medication occurred between October and December, thanks to shield laws. By December 2023, telehealth abortions accounted for 19% of all abortions nationwide.
The big picture
- In March 2024, the Supreme Court heard arguments about the mifepristone case, challenging the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the medication that is used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the U.S.
- At the center of the case is whether the agency had the authority to expand access to the drug in 2016 and 2021 by allowing doctors to prescribe it through telemedicine and send the pill by mail.
- The justices appeared skeptical of the arguments to limit access to the pill, which the FDA has approved for over two decades. Several justices questioned whether the plaintiffs have standing, bringing skepticism to their entitlement to sue the FDA. The justices also challenged the plaintiffs' request to apply nationwide restrictions to the drug, which would be the first time a court had second-guessed the FDA's expert judgment about drug safety.
- The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine argues that the "FDA always envisioned that emergency room doctors…would be a crucial component of the mifepristone regimen." The group says doctors would suffer if they had to treat patients who have taken the medication. The Biden administration said the alliance failed to show "any evidence of injury from the availability" of the drug.
- The government asserts that the drug has been "safe and effective" since 2000. The White House said the FDA has "maintained that scientific judgment across five presidential administrations, while updating the drug's approved conditions of use based on additional evidence and experience…"
Do you support increased abortion access?
-Jamie Epstein
(Photo credit: Flickr/Robin Marty)
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I wouldn't say "increased access" to abortion. I think all women should have the same access to healthcare they had before the Supremely Catholic Court struck down Roe in 2022. If this means they can order termination pills from a doctor in another state, then so be it.
No woman should have fewer rights over her own body, healthcare, ability to care for her children, earning potential, and career path than the men in her state just because of where she lives.
If shield laws are a way of protecting access to these vital medications when women need them, then that's great with me.
Elect Democrats in 2024 to enshrine equal rights to women into our Constitution.
Medication abortion has maintained abortion access for many, especially woman living in states with abortion bans as evidenced by the 10% increase in abortion nationwide from 2022 to 2023.
However it hasn't helped women with pregnancy complications that need in person medical care, and procedures not mediation resulting in both higher maternal (2%-51%) and infant (16%) mortality rates.
Nor does it protect against the Supreme Court potentially overriding FDA decisions with no scientific or medical basis to support such decisions.
National legislation is needed to protect reproductive healthcare. Access to medication abortion is just a temporary work around just like Roe was for 50 years.
" More than 1m abortions were performed in the US in 2023, a 10% increase from 2020, according to research from the Guttmacher Institute"
"Medication abortions made up 63% of all abortions in the US in 2023, with 642,700 medication abortions taking place in formal healthcare settings. Only 492,210 medication abortions occurred in 2020, making up 53% of US abortions, the study concluded."
"the number of medication abortions in 2023 may be higher than the study suggests. Current figures do not include self-managed abortions or those who received abortion medication in states where there are total bans."
"Among individual abortion policies, states with a licensed physician requirement had a 51% higher total maternal mortality and a 35% higher maternal mortality (i.e. a death during pregnancy or within 42 days of being pregnant), and restrictions on state Medicaid funding for abortion was associated with a 29% higher total maternal mortality."
"States with the tightest abortion laws had a 16% increased infant mortality rate from 2014 to 2018, compared to the states with the least restrictions on abortion"
" Most of the debate on Tuesday morning focused on whether the challengers have standing, so that the lawsuit can go forward. Representing the FDA, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the justices that the lawsuit can only go forward if the challengers can identify a doctor who faces imminent harm as a result of the 2016 and 2021 changes. But the challengers’ standing argument, she contended, rests on a “long chain of remote contingencies”:"
"Some of the court’s more conservative justices were skeptical – most notably, Justice Samuel Alito, who pressed Prelogar to explain whether anyone would be able to sue to challenge the 2016 and 2021 changes. Even if the FDA acted unlawfully in making those changes, Alito said incredulously, “the American people have no remedy?”
"Chief Justice John Roberts asked both Prelogar and Jessica Ellsworth, representing Danco, to identify a point at which an increase in the risks associated with mifepristone might be enough to confer standing. What percentage of adverse consequences would suffice, Roberts asked, or how many visits to the emergency room?"
https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/03/supreme-court-appears-likely-to-allow-abortion-drug-to-remain-available/
https://www.axios.com/2023/01/19/mothers-anti-abortion-bans-states-die
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2024-01-18/infant-deaths-higher-in-states-where-abortion-is-banned-report
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/AJPH.2021.306396
https://sph.tulane.edu/news/study-finds-higher-maternal-mortality-rates-states-more-abortion-restrictions
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/abortion-increase-2023-data
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Abortion care is health care - NOBODY ELSES BUSINESS
Please support shield laws to keep abortion pill access steady.
Of course, I support access to abortion pills. The more options available, the more solutions we have to address different situations. Just because someone doesn’t believe in abortion doesn’t mean others shouldn’t have access. Everyone’s circumstances are different.
Pregnancy is one of the hardest things to deal with for a man or a woman, however, a woman is the one who has to carry toe baby, go throught he possible medical issues and the strenuous task of giving birth -- therefore it should be entirely on her if she is willing to do it or not. if you ar5e against it, then you should try to walk a mile in a pregnant woman's shoes on a 100 degree day in NYC and see how you feel.
Abortion must be kept accessible. Make no mistake: attempts to limit access to abortion are attempts to limit power of women. Don't be fooled
Abortion is Women healthcare and nothing more! People are trying make it something more than healthcare!
than you have Medicare advantage which is nothing more to privatization of Medicare and the fleecing of Americans
Let's do everything we can to ensure women's access to the healthcare that they need. Science relative policies and laws that do not take science into account should have no place on the books. Religion and its views have no place in public policy.
It all starts with the penis yet no law governs the use of it. Must be nice to be a man.
Women are capable of making their own decisions about whether to carry a pregnancy to term. Old men should not be making these decisions!
My body my choice !
Everyone should have access!
Whether or not to bear a child and to choose to a lifetime commitment to that child must always be the woman's choice. And if she decides NOT to bear a child we must respect her choice.
No one else gets to make this choice for her!
Certainly not some politician in a Statehouse or in Washington, DC!
It is not their life.
It is not their choice.
Abortion is necessary healthcare. Only the pregnant person and her doctor can decide
No one wants abortions, but sometimes they are needed And when needed this decision should be made by the mother in consideration of medical advice .....and not by strangers or government mandate.
"Do you support increased abortion access?"
A Qualified Yes.
Roe v. Wade was the Gold Standard.
The Disgraced Supreme Court did away with Roe v. Wade.
So the answer may depend on which state you live in and how mindlessly Red it is.
To be clear: Conservative views on abortion are not science based, but they hide that fact.
Killing human fetus... Inhuman!
Increased access to abortion means safety and fewer women dying. Nature doesn't care about a pope in 1590 or the American conservatives trying to prevent Jimmy Carter from getting a second term deciding what is immoral in order to make themselves richer, the poor poorer, and the people that those in power hated suffering even more.