Abortion Pills Will Be Available By Mail in Majority US States

The abortion pill can be mailed in the majority of US states. That delivery method was temporarily introduced due to the corona crisis, but is now becoming permanent. That is what the American drug regulator Food and Drug Administration (FDA) decided on Thursday, report American media.

Nineteen American states, including Texas, have laws that restrict or prohibit the sending of the abortion pill, Reuters news agency reports. The FDA’s decision will initially have no effect there. Nevertheless, proponents believe the scheme will increase access to abortion for women in all states. Women could travel to other states to get the abortion drug there.

Access to medicine and abortion will also be increased for women in remote areas without caregivers nearby, or for women who have difficulty traveling long distances to abortion clinics. The pill, called mifepristone, can be used up to ten weeks of pregnancy and is sometimes also prescribed to treat women who have had miscarriages. Those prescribing the drug must be FDA-certified, such as doctors and pharmacists.

Also read: Abortion is big test for conservative US Supreme Court

Political debate

ACLU, a United States citizens’ rights organization, calls the decision “an enormous relief” for “countless” women who want to have an abortion or have had miscarriages, the report said. New York Times. Anti-abortion organizations believe that the FDA is ignoring possible complications of the pill and thereby endangering women, reports Reuters news agency.

The decision is likely to further sharpen the political abortion debate in the United States. Conservative states, which want to curtail the right to abortion, are expected to pass more laws that will hinder the distribution of the Pill. Other states, such as California and New York, which have tried to make abortion more accessible in recent years, are expected to make the abortion pill available to women in other states.

Although the right to abortion has been federally enshrined in the United States since 1973, conservative judges on the US Supreme Court could end a woman’s right to terminate pregnancies next year. The Court will then hear a controversial Mississippi law that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks almost without exception. This summer, the state of Texas banned abortion from six weeks after conception.