As many as 93 percent of students at public universities in Massachusetts are more than 30 minutes away from the closest abortion facility via public transportation. A new bill in Massachusetts tackles this barrier by ensuring access to abortion pills at public university health centers.
Tag: Medication Abortion
Removing FDA Restrictions on Mifepristone Is Key Step to Challenging State Bans on Telemedicine Abortion
Similar to how ending criminal sodomy laws paved the way to legalizing same-sex marriage, removal of the FDA restriction on mifepristone is essential to normalizing telemedicine abortion and will be an important tool for advocates as they lobby states to eliminate telemedicine abortion bans.
New Repro Legal Defense Fund Supports Self-Managed Abortion
The reproductive justice lawyers network If/When/How launched a nationwide Repro Legal Defense Fund—a first-of-its-kind resource to support women and others investigated, arrested or prosecuted for self-managed abortion.
Self-managed abortion is when someone ends a pregnancy outside of a clinical setting, such as buying abortion pills online and using them without medical supervision. RLDF provides money for bail and legal representation.
Abortion on Demand Offers Telemedicine Abortion in 20+ States and Counting: “I Didn’t Know I Could Do This!”
Dr. Jamie Phifer, founder and medical director of Abortion On Demand: “It’s called Abortion On Demand for a reason. It’s provocative, I know. But when you’ve already decided that you don’t want to continue your pregnancy, especially if you have pregnancy symptoms, making people wait doesn’t feel right to me. … Abortion care is easy. Medically speaking, it is easy enough that a robot could do it. So we built the robot.”
Abortion in a Post-Roe World? “People Are Resilient and Resourceful”
The day after the Supreme Court announced they would hear the Mississippi abortion ban case, internet searches related to self-managed abortion surged across the United States, especially in states hostile to abortion rights. Online searches for terms related to abortion pills such as “misoprostol” and “medical abortion” exploded by more than 5,000 percent in the 24 hours after the Court’s announcement—evidence a post-Roe world would be quite different because we now have extremely safe and highly effective abortion pills that are easy to obtain and use.
Why Order Abortion Pills Online? Affordability, Privacy and Convenience, Says New Study
As red states increasingly pass abortion bans and the Supreme Court is now reviewing a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade, Aid Access and other online providers of abortion pills are likely to play an increasingly important role in helping people access abortion.
“As legislators make in-clinic abortion harder and harder to get, people are having to look for viable alternatives.”
Advocates Cheer FDA Review of Abortion Pill Restrictions
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will undertake a review of longstanding restrictions on the medication mifepristone used for miscarriage and abortion care.
“Finally, science and common sense have a foothold on this issue.”
Unprecedented Surge in Anti-Abortion Laws Proposed and Passed Across the U.S.
Anti-abortion lawmakers have passed significantly more abortion restrictions in 2021 than in the first four months of 2011—the year previously regarded as the most hostile to abortion rights since Roe—enacting 61 restrictions in 13 states.
“The current barrage of coordinated attacks must be taken seriously as the unprecedented threat to reproductive health care and rights that it is. The year 2021 is well on its way to being a defining one in abortion rights history.”
Keeping Score: Chloé Zhao Makes Oscars History; Philonise Floyd Calls Chauvin Verdict “Necessary”; Senate Passes Anti-Hate Crime Bill; Reuters’s First Woman Editor-in-Chief
This week: Biden administration speaks on Black maternal health; all U.S. adults are eligible for COVID-19 vaccination; Derek Chauvin is convicted for murdering George Floyd; Senate passes bill to address anti-Asian crimes; Biden pledges to cut emissions in half; and more!
FDA Allows Telemedicine Abortion During Pandemic
The FDA issued long-awaited guidance lifting a restriction on the abortion pill mifepristone for the duration of the COVID-19 public health emergency. The move permits telemedicine abortion.
The announcement came in response to a long-running campaign by activists and medical professionals to get the FDA to lift the in-person distribution requirement on mifepristone.