- Today the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved use of the drug mifepristone as an abortifacient, after more than ten years of political pressure by anti-abortion zealots to block its use in the U.S. FDA approval permits doctors who meet certain requirements to prescribe the drug. However mifepristone, better known as RU 486, is subject to the same laws that many states have enacted which restrict women's access to surgical abortion, including prohibitions on public hospital abortions, parental notification laws, skewed counseling and mandatory delay requirements.
"It is not a magic pill that will make the burdensome abortion restrictions on the books in every state in the nation vanish. Despite mifepristone's great potential to improve medical services for women, anti-abortion state legislatures have already erected a labyrinth of laws restricting all abortions," said Janet Benshoof, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a legal advocacy organization.
FDA approval of the use of mifepristone does not affect the numerous abortion restrictions already in effect in every state in the nation, most of which do not distinguish between medical and surgical abortion, and may apply equally to those procedures. For example, parental notification and consent laws, in effect in 31 states, can be applied to any abortion situation. Other laws, such as "physician only" laws, which prohibit non-physicians from performing abortions, in effect in 43 states, may apply to health providers who assist with medical abortion. In 14 states, targeted regulation of abortion provider laws (TRAP laws) may force doctors interested in offering patients medical abortion to comply with burdensome regulations faced by surgical abortion providers, such as meeting strict physical plant and staffing requirements.
Although a 1997 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that doctors indicated a willingness to offer medical abortions, political opposition to abortion is so great that these doctors will be confronted with an array of laws and regulations intended to prevent them from providing this care. "The sterling track record of mifepristone's safety and effectiveness in clinical trials in the US and in use in Europe and Asia," said Benshoof, "exposes the hypocrisy of those politicians who are pushing anti-abortion laws under the guise of helping women."
In 1992, the Center for Reproductive Rights challenged the U.S. government's import ban on abortifacients for personal use, including RU 486, a challenge ongoing before a federal district court. That ban remains in effect against the import of abortifacients other than mifepristone.
See our article, "Providing Medical Abortion: Legal Issues of Relevance to Providers" published in the June 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Women's Association.
