Abortion rights are once again at the center stage of a legal battle in the US, this time in a presidential election year. This time the conflict revolves around ‘mifepristone’, a pill used to induce chemical abortion. The history of the legality of abortion in the US has been ugly and violent right from Roe vs. Wade. It was just two years ago that anti-abortionists won their case after the Supreme Court overruled the 1973 historical verdict. Abortion was no longer a protected right under the US Constitution, but was left a subject for individual states to decide.
At the time the FDA first approved abortion pills, women were required to take the pills under medical supervision given the risk of bleeding and serious injury. But in 2016 and 2021, the agency decided to relax the restrictions regarding access to ‘mifepristone’, allowing the use of the medication up to 10 weeks of pregnancy (as opposed to the earlier 7 weeks) and facilitating its delivery by mail without an in-person consultation with a doctor. Anti-abortionists have once again come forward against this new ruling. The reasoning stands that doctors who are against abortion will be forced to act against their consciences when they have to tend to emergency complications resulting from the use of the medication. They also point out the risks of such unrestricted access to the health of a pregnant woman. Uninformed women’s lives are at risk with such unsupervised self-medication, as evidenced by the tragic experiences recounted by victims, involving heavy bleeding and suffering.
While those in favor of abortion rights cite studies that claim the safety of these pills, the other side assert that the drugs are high risk. Nearly one in 25 women who use them experience complications, according to the FDA’s own drug label. Allegedly, they come with a black box warning that cautions women about the potentially fatal infections and bleeding that can result from the use of the drug. They accuse the FDA of being “reckless” in their decision to give women the right to self-administer these drugs at home. Pro-abortionists, on the other hand, question the right of a group of doctors to prevent the access of a drug to all women. They point out that such an argument would have implications on not just this one medicine, but “virtually every drug approval”.
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The Supreme Court’s focus now is on deciding whether the plaintiffs have the legal standing to charge the lawsuit. In reality, the question once again comes down to the morality of abortions. Does the mother get to decide whether to give birth to the life growing inside her or not? When many states in the US consider the murder of a pregnant woman double murder and warrants harsher punishments, does a woman’s autonomy of her body give her exclusive rights to terminate the same life? In the end, it’s a question of a woman’s right to abortion versus the right to life of the fetus growing inside her. At what point does the fetus acquire the right to live? – a question pro-abortionists will have to answer.