Attorneys general from 23 GOP-led states back suit seeking to block abortion pill
Dr. Jamila Perritt, president and chief executive for Physicians for Reproductive Health, said during a press briefing this week on the court case that abortion medication is safe and effective, and that “when abortion is more difficult to access, we know that this means abortion gets pushed later and later into pregnancy as folks try to navigate these barriers.”
If the judge in the case were to pull mifepristone, Perritt said, people in states where abortion is still legal would be able to access abortion using misoprostol alone since “there are approved regimens of managing medication abortion using only misoprostol.”
Perritt added that “while it is equally safe … dosage and timing to completion of the abortion varies if mifepristone is not added to the equation.”
Patients in legal states would also still have access to procedural abortion, Perritt noted.
Reproductive health experts have said the suit is based on flawed evidence, selected studies and anecdotes.
Dr. Iffath Abbasi Hoskins, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a written statement in January that “restricting access to mifepristone interferes with the ability of obstetrician–gynecologists and other clinicians to deliver the highest-quality evidence-based care for their patients.”
“Since 2020, continued usage of mifepristone for abortion care without the in-person dispensing requirement has been shown to be safe and effective,” she wrote when the FDA announced it would allow commercial pharmacies to fill prescriptions for mifepristone.
The judge in the lawsuit, Trump appointee Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk, could rule on whether to pull mifepristone from the market as soon as this month.