Three Republican states are pushing to reduce access to the abortion medication, mifepristone.
Kansas, Idaho and Missouri filed a legal request on Friday that would bar the drug’s use after seven weeks of pregnancy, rather than 10, and it would require three in-person doctor office visits, rather than none, in the latest attempt to further restrict a drug that is used in most abortions in America.
Currently one in three women and girls of reproductive age, around 21.5 million people, live in states which either completely ban abortions, or do so after six weeks of pregnancy. At six weeks, most women are not yet aware that they are pregnant.
Abortion is the top election issue for young women in the 2024 election, with around 40 percent now prioritizing their reproductive rights when they had to the polls, according to a survey produced by KFF. This is a significant increase from last spring, when this number sat at 20 percent.
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Mifepristone is generally used in combination with misoprostol to induce a medical abortion in early-stage pregnancy, typically in the first 10 weeks.
But the drug also has other uses for reproductive care, including managing miscarriages and inducing labor in cases of fatal death in the womb.
States are pushing to reinstate requirements that the drug be dispensed in person rather than by mail and requesting that courts reinstate the restrictions around the drug to where they were originally, before they Food and Drug Administration (FDA) relaxed them first in 2016, and again in 2021.
These relaxed rules allow providers of care, including nurse practitioners, to prescribe the drug, as well as doctors.
The FDA has affirmed the safety of the drug, and eased restrictions, ultimately allowing for the pill to be sent through mail in 2021.
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Mifepristone pills are used in almost two third of abortions across the country. They are prescribed via telehealth to patients who live in states with bans by doctors. Expanded access to the medications has seen a rise in monthly abortion numbers since the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
This is not the first time states have attempt to block access to the medication. A filing seeking to sue the FDA was made in a federal court in Texas. The case was returned in June after the Supreme Court agreed to keep the federal changes that eased access to the medication.
The justices refused the states’ push to intervene in the case and said that the anti-abortion organizations lacked the legal right to sue. States argue that they have legal standing, because access to the pills undermines state abortion laws, and frustrate state law enforcement.
This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.
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