Abortion Pills The Next Battleground In US Reproductive Fight
When conservative US countries rushed to impose a prohibition on abortion after the decision of the Supreme Court bomb, the fight over the reproductive rights in America was ready to switch to the new battlefield: pills that encourage abortion.
In a few other ways available, Biden administration will focus on expanding access to abortion pills for women who live in states where procedures are prohibited or restricted -while these countries and strong conservative groups will surely make legal challenges to prohibit use.
A few hours after the High Court destroyed 50 years of constitutional protection for abortion rights on Friday, President Joe Biden ordered health officials to ensure that abortion pills were available for American women.
“I will do everything in my strength to protect the rights of women in countries where they will face the consequences of today’s decisions,” he said in a television speech to the nation.
Pills, which can be used without significant risk to end pregnancy until 10 weeks of pregnancy, have contributed half of all abortions performed in the United States.
Demand will soar further after 11 states mostly in the southern conservatively led by the Republican party to move to greatly limit or fully forbid abortion, with others will follow.
Already Saturday, some activists gathered outside the Supreme Court in the US Capital Washington holding posters with instructions where women can get abortion pills, while others shout “my body, my choice.”
Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch doctor who runs Aid Access, an Austrian -based organization that provides abortion pills through the internet, believes that the current situation faced by American women is not tragic like 50 years ago, before Landmark Roe vs. Wade Rumah 1973 which captures the right to abortion in America.
“Abortion pills cannot be stopped,” Gomperts told AFP in a telephone interview. “So there is always access to a safe abortion if a woman has an unwanted pregnancy.”
But after Friday’s decision, it might be easier to say than to do.
A legal grey area
Food and medicine administration, American health regulator, approved the use of abortion pills two decades ago and last year allowed them to be prescribed by telemedicine and sent by post.
But its use in anti-abortion countries remains a legal area of legal and is likely to be the forefront in the battle of future courts for reproductive rights.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports access to abortion, 19 US states require that abortion pills are physically managed by doctors, thus prohibiting their shipments by post.
And in countries that prohibit all abortion methods, women can be prohibited from looking for tele-health promises with doctors abroad or foreign doctors, such as Gomperts groups.
In this case, they may have to travel to a state where reproductive television promises are permitted and get drugs sent to addresses outside the country.
But there are other complications.
Drug abortion requires two drugs: First, the mifepristone dose is taken to block hormones that support pregnancy; Then, 24 to 48 hours later, misoprostol is taken to induce contractions.
That raises the question: Can a woman from an anti-abortion country be demanded if she receives the first dose elsewhere, but takes a second dose after returning home?
When liberal countries take action to facilitate abortion for women from other parts of this country, there are concerns that conservative countries might try to sue health workers and advocacy groups involved in these efforts -and even patients themselves.
Anticipating such plans, Attorney General Biden Merrick Garland on Friday warned that the state could not prohibit abortion pills, which was approved by the federal regulator, “based on disagreement with the assessment of the FDA expert on safety and efficacy” because the federal law preceded state law.
When this legal battle prepared to play, Anti-Abortion Advocate Savannah Craven said he and his colleagues would try to get all abortion methods, including with pills, prohibited throughout the United States.
“I believe in the sanctity and dignity of human life. Life begins in the womb, life begins at the time of conception,” he said.
But the argument fell flat with Elizabeth Kellogg and her husband and Reitz, who appeared to protest outside the Supreme Court with their eight -month -old daughter Lorelei.
“If it’s about life, they will worry about the life of The Birther, they will worry about life after birth,” Kellogg told AFP.
“Very few are done for the truth -actually endure the purity of life in a specified way.”