The war over abortion rights has moved from the sidewalks in front of medical clinics to pharmacies and mailboxes. The Food and Drug Administration’s loosening of restrictions on abortion pills has provided some degree of protection to women in the post-Roe v. Wade world. But it also has nudged some in the anti-choice movement toward new levels of extremism — including rethinking their long-held position that only abortion providers should be punished, and not the women themselves.
After last summer’s Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe, one red state after another immediately outlawed the procedure. It was a foregone conclusion that eliminating a federal baseline-right to abortion would create essentially two Americas: states that recognize women’s right to control what happens in their own bodies until the point of fetal viability (the standard under Roe) and states like Missouri, which now denies that right under most circumstances. It took literally days after the court’s ruling for the first horror stories to emerge of women and girls desperately having to flee their own states to make their own medical decisions.
But in a potential game changer, the FDA has loosened regulations on the abortion medication mifepristone, part of a treatment that can end pregnancies within the first 10 weeks and is used in more than half of U.S. abortions. Already available by mail, the drug will now be approved for sale at retail pharmacies, with a doctor’s prescription.
