Regulators are due to decide Thursday whether to uphold, revise or scrap longstanding restrictions on the abortion drug mifepristone
, the Food and Drug Administration is set to open a new phase in the abortion wars this week, when it issues a key decision on how doctors can dispense pills to end an early pregnancy.
While making the pills widely available could give patients a workaround should the high court uphold the Mississippi law, it wouldn’t guarantee access to at-home abortions to everyone who wants it. First, the pills can only be used in the U.S. during the first 10 weeks of a pregnancy — meaning that by the time many people discover they are pregnant and figure out how to obtain them, it could already be too late.
It’s unclear whether such state bans unconstitutionally preempt federal law by denying people access to medication the FDA deems safe and effective, said Patti Zettler, a professor specializing in FDA law at Ohio State University. What’s certain is years of legal battles to come. And abortion rights groups say even if the bans are eventually struck down, they are already deterring people from accessing the pills.
next year of longstanding precedents protecting the right to terminate a pregnancy. That’s put more of an emphasis on the pills — and who can access them.
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