“For lots of people, having the choice of getting an abortion within the privateness and luxury of their very own house is interesting,” Rachel Okay. Jones, a analysis scientist with the abortion rights-supporting Guttmacher Institute, instructed NPR.
In line with data released by Guttmacher earlier this yr, abortion drugs accounted for 54% of abortions in 2020, making them the popular technique of selection for abortion.
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Whereas the drug was accepted by the FDA greater than 20 years in the past, restrictions on mailing abortion drugs had been lifted throughout the pandemic and the tablet might be obtained via telehealth appointments and mail-order pharmacies. This allowed people to simply get hold of abortions at house, particularly in states that thought of them pointless procedures throughout a time that hospitals had been at capability with COVID-19 sufferers.
As a result of the Biden administration lately made these adjustments to entry everlasting, GOP states are trying to push again.
In line with Guttmacher, greater than a dozen states restrict the use of telemedicine to supply abortion drugs. Along with these present restrictions, Deliberate Parenthood says new restrictions have been launched in two dozen states this yr alone, a few of which might ban the drugs altogether if Roe v. Wade is overturned, NPR reported.
Whereas these payments not solely prohibit human rights however typically put lives in danger, GOP officers predictably proceed to assert they’re an effort to “defend girls.”
“Why would we not do every part inside our energy to guard girls’s well being and security throughout this troublesome time of their lives?” stated state Sen. Bruce Thompson of Georgia, based on NPR. Thompson sponsored SB 456, a invoice banning abortion tablet supply by mail and requiring medical doctors to look at sufferers in individual earlier than prescribing them.
Others, nonetheless, have famous how these payments and bans on the tablet disproportionately affect folks of coloration.
“What’s actually merciless about this invoice is that those that are already probably the most weak are those who’re most definitely to be burned by this injustice,” state Sen. Kim Jackson instructed NPR. “People who find themselves poor, individuals who dwell in rural communities. Folks with disabilities, and folks of coloration.”
The transfer in Republican-majority states to cross abortion bans modeled on Texas’ so-called abortion bounty regulation follows the passing of a separate regulation in Mississippi, which is presently making its solution to the Supreme Court docket. The regulation has the power to restrict abortion rights throughout the nation by overturning Roe v. Wade.
