Latest news with #GuttmacherInstitute
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
New law lets Maine prescribers keep their names off abortion pill labels
Jun. 2—Gov. Janet Mills has signed a new law that allows health care providers to remove their names from labels when prescribing abortion pills. The law, LD 538, was introduced by state Rep. Sally Cluchey, D-Bowdoinham, who said she has heard from prescribers who say they have been threatened or harassed for prescribing mifepristone, an abortion medication that is increasingly used for abortions. Medication abortions account for 63% of all abortions in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national abortion-rights nonprofit. In a previous interview with the Press Herald, Cluchey said that health care providers who have prescribed abortion medication "have faced harassment through phone calls, test messages and online threats" and have been "stalked, targeted with bomb threats and harassed in their homes." However, abortion opponents, including Rep. Marygrace Caroline Cimino, R-Bridgton, said the real reason for the bill is to shield abortion providers from criminal charges from other states. "The purpose of this bill is clear — to protect doctors from criminal prosecution when prescribing these (drugs) to patients in other states where abortion is restricted," Cimino said in May. New York passed a similar bill this year days after a New York physician was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant girl in Louisiana. Maine is one of a several states that also has passed "shield laws" that provide health care workers with legal protection from charges filed by other states for prescribing abortion medication or providing abortion care. Abortions were legal nationwide for five decades until a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned Roe v. Wade, paving the way for states to ban abortion. Thirteen states have passed total abortion bans since the 2022 decision, while Maine has expanded abortion rights, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Maine previously outlawed abortion at fetal viability — typically considered to be between 22 and 24 weeks, with exceptions for the health and life of the mother — but removed the ban in 2023. Abortion rights advocates said that the vague wording of the law made it difficult to obtain abortions in Maine even when the health of the mother was in question, and the new law leaves the decision between doctors and their patients. Copy the Story Link We believe it's important to offer commenting on certain stories as a benefit to our readers. At its best, our comments sections can be a productive platform for readers to engage with our journalism, offer thoughts on coverage and issues, and drive conversation in a respectful, solutions-based way. It's a form of open discourse that can be useful to our community, public officials, journalists and others. We do not enable comments on everything — exceptions include most crime stories, and coverage involving personal tragedy or sensitive issues that invite personal attacks instead of thoughtful discussion. You can read more here about our commenting policy and terms of use. More information is also found on our FAQs. Show less
The Independent
27-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Critics warn anti-abortion groups are using ‘bogus' science to get Trump and RFK to ban widely used drugs
A dubious report from anti-abortion activists that casts doubt on the safety of a widely used abortion drug is now in the hands of top health officials in President Donald Trump 's administration. Abortion rights advocates and public health researchers have roundly condemned the report as an unscientific and politically motivated attempt to undermine the drug approval process for mifepristone, commonly used in medication abortions, which make up a vast majority of all abortions in the United States. Anti-abortion activists and influential right-wing legal groups have spent years suing the federal government in an attempt to cut off Americans' access to mifepristone, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago. Now, those groups appear to have launched a backdoor effort to replace the FDA's data altogether. 'This is one paper based on shoddy research methods to replace decades of safety and efficacy research,' according to Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy for reproductive health research group the Guttmacher Institute. 'It's absolutely not legitimate for that one paper to displace decades of medical research,' she told The Independent. 'Can the FDA do it? I mean, an FDA that followed science and rigor absolutely would not do that. I think the question here is, how politicized will the FDA get?' Last month, Trump's FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said he had no plans to change the government's position on mifepristone unless new data discovered a safety concern. Days later, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a right-wing think tank, released a report claiming serious complications from mifepristone use were 22 times higher than previously reported. It called on the FDA to 'further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women' and 'reconsider its approval altogether.' Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley – whose wife, Erin Hawley, is a senior counsel with the right-wing legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is suing the government over mifepristone — then called on Makary to 'follow this new data.' Hawley also recently introduced legislation to 'reinstate safety regulations on the chemical abortion drug mifepristone.' Under questions from Hawley in a Senate committee hearing this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr called the report's alleged findings 'alarming.' 'Clearly, it indicates that, at the very least, the label should be changed,' Kennedy said. He asked Makary 'to do a complete review and to report back.' During a Senate hearing on May 22, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray told Makary that the administration is 'laying the groundwork to rip away access to medication abortion across the country.' This 'has not gotten enough attention, and I know you'd prefer to keep it that way,' she said. Makary said he still has not read the center's study, which was not peer-reviewed nor published in a medical journal. Dozens of peer-reviewed studies over the last two decades have shown that fewer than 0.5 percent of patients who take mifepristone have serious adverse reactions. The center's report claims that number is more like 11 percent. The study, first disseminated by conservative and religious media outlets last month, was authored by a group that aims to push back against the 'extreme progressive agenda while building a consensus for conservatives.' The center was on the advisory board of Project 2025, which provided a blueprint for the Trump administration. Its authors include the center's Director of Data Analysis Jamie Bryan Hall and President Ryan Anderson. Hall was a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation: the think tank that organized Project 2025. Anderson is the co-author of five books, including Tearing US Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. The pair cited the work of a 'team of data scientists, analysts, and engineers' who were assisted by their own 'clinical team of board-certified obstetricians and gynecologists.' Members have a 'history of academic research and peer-reviewed publication,' Hall and Anderson wrote. They claimed to have reviewed 865,727 insurance claims from women who were prescribed the drug, but the report does not disclose which database was used. According to The Washington Post, the center said the reason was tied to a confidentiality agreement with the vendor. Public health researchers speaking to The Independent noted that the report's definition of a 'serious adverse event' could include minor side effects, including routine bleeding, unrelated sexually transmitted infections, and routine follow-up visits. The report also lists ectopic pregnancies, which do not result from mifepristone use, as serious adverse events. Citing insurance data, they said their analysis had found 10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or another 'serious adverse event' within a period of 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. 'This study is the statistical equivalent of a category 5 hurricane hitting the prevailing narrative of the abortion industry,' Anderson said in a statement. 'Calling it a study would be too generous,' said Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a professor in the University of California-San Francisco's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. 'The fact that it's not peer-reviewed means that a lot of the methodological flaws were not corrected or were not addressed in the paper,' she told The Independent. In a statement to The Independent, Anderson with the Ethics and Public Policy Center said they are 'very pleased that government officials at the highest level are taking our invitation to replicate our study seriously.' 'As for the critics, most all of their criticisms are based on explicit misreadings of our paper,' he said. 'As for peer-review, what matters is not academic gate-keepers but replicability. We have made our study fully replicable for anyone who wants to analyze the insurance claims data.' Anderson said: 'We stand behind our analysis of healthcare claims data which is why we are asking the FDA to conduct its own review of this data. Real world data in which money changed hands based on the treatment of patients and coding by doctors brings a higher level of confidence. The dataset is available for purchase and our methodology is public. This study is fully replicable, and we encourage others to replicate it. We are glad that it appears that the FDA will be doing so.' There were 36 reports of deaths associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000, according to the FDA. Those include two cases of pregnancy outside of the womb and several cases of sepsis. 'The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient,' the agency noted. A spokesperson for GenBioPro, the manufacturer of mifepristone, said the report is 'clearly flawed.' 'If this study isn't recognized widely for what it is – just another attempt by the anti-abortion movement to spread misinformation about the safety of the abortion pill using a bogus and biased study – Americans will be left with misleading information when they need to make critical health care and life decisions,' Emma Thomas told The Independent in an email. 'This is a report with no peer review, no transparency of methods. It comes out, and within days is cited at our highest levels of government to the person who makes decisions around regulation of medications,' said Heidi Moseson, a senior research scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health. 'And that suggests a very different pipeline of the way information is traveling with sort of egregious political motivation,' she told The Independent. A medication abortion typically involves a two-part protocol: mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone to stop a pregnancy from growing, followed by misoprostol, which helps the uterus contract. The medication is also frequently used for miscarriage treatment. Mifepristone was first approved for use by the FDA in most cases in 2000, and the drug is approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. A vast majority of all abortions occur within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. Roughly 63 percent of all abortions in the United States are medication abortions, the Guttmacher Institute says. From 2019 through 2020, nearly 93 percent of all abortions were performed before the 13th week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the FDA under President Joe Biden permanently lifted the in-person requirement for medication abortion prescriptions, allowing patients to access the drugs via telehealth appointments and online pharmacies so patients can take the drugs at home. In the years that followed, anti-abortion state legislators filed more than 100 bills to restrict access to abortion drugs, or sought to ban them altogether. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wad e in 2022, more than a dozen states effectively outlawed all abortions in most circumstances. Months after that ruling, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit targeting mifepristone with a court in Amarillo, Texas, on behalf of a group of anti-abortion physicians, claiming the FDA wrongfully approved mifepristone and then improperly eliminated requirements that the drug should only be dispensed in person. Trump-appointed District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who had formerly worked as a chief counsel with right-wing Christian legal activist group First Liberty Institute, later issued a ruling to suspend the FDA's approval of the drug, but the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his decision. Whether the FDA under the Trump administration can now simply swap underlying data with another is 'the million dollar question,' according to Upadhyay. 'As a scientist, it's really concerning and devastating to see what is meant to be a system to keep people safe and understand true health risks weaponized in this moment to further restrict people's access to really essential healthcare,' Moseson said.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Millions of women use abortion drugs safely. Experts warn anti-abortion groups are pushing ‘bogus' science to get them banned
A dubious report from anti-abortion activists that casts doubt on the safety of a widely used abortion drug is now in the hands of top health officials in President Donald Trump's administration. Abortion rights advocates and public health researchers have roundly condemned the report as an unscientific and politically motivated attempt to undermine the drug approval process for mifepristone, commonly used in medication abortions, which make up a vast majority of all abortions in the United States. Anti-abortion activists and influential right-wing legal groups have spent years suing the federal government in an attempt to cut off Americans' access to mifepristone, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago. Now, those groups appear to have launched a backdoor effort to replace the FDA's data altogether. 'This is one paper based on shoddy research methods to replace decades of safety and efficacy research,' according to Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy for reproductive health research group the Guttmacher Institute. 'It's absolutely not legitimate for that one paper to displace decades of medical research,' she told The Independent. 'Can the FDA do it? I mean, an FDA that followed science and rigor absolutely would not do that. I think the question here is, how politicized will the FDA get?' Last month, Trump's FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said he had no plans to change the government's position on mifepristone unless new data discovered a safety concern. Days later, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a right-wing think tank, released a report claiming serious complications from mifepristone use were 22 times higher than previously reported. It called on the FDA to 'further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women' and 'reconsider its approval altogether.' Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley – whose wife, Erin Hawley, is a senior counsel with the right-wing legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is suing the government over mifepristone — then called on Makary to 'follow this new data.' Hawley also recently introduced legislation to 'reinstate safety regulations on the chemical abortion drug mifepristone.' Most abortions in the United States are medication abortions, according to the Guttmacher Institute Under questions from Hawley in a Senate committee hearing this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr called the report's alleged findings 'alarming.' 'Clearly, it indicates that, at the very least, the label should be changed,' Kennedy said. He asked Makary 'to do a complete review and to report back.' During a Senate hearing on May 22, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray told Makary that the administration is 'laying the groundwork to rip away access to medication abortion across the country.' This 'has not gotten enough attention, and I know you'd prefer to keep it that way,' she said. Makary said he still has not read the center's study, which was not peer-reviewed nor published in a medical journal. Dozens of peer-reviewed studies over the last two decades have shown that fewer than 0.5 percent of patients who take mifepristone have serious adverse reactions. The center's report claims that number is more like 11 percent. The study, first disseminated by conservative and religious media outlets last month, was authored by a group that aims to push back against the 'extreme progressive agenda while building a consensus for conservatives.' The center was on the advisory board of Project 2025, which provided a blueprint for the Trump administration. Its authors include the center's Director of Data Analysis Jamie Bryan Hall and President Ryan Anderson. Hall was a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation: the think tank that organized Project 2025. Anderson is the co-author of five books, including Tearing US Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. The pair cited the work of a 'team of data scientists, analysts, and engineers' who were assisted by their own 'clinical team of board-certified obstetricians and gynecologists.' Members have a 'history of academic research and peer-reviewed publication,' Hall and Anderson wrote. They claimed to have reviewed 865,727 insurance claims from women who were prescribed the drug, but the report does not disclose which database was used. According to The Washington Post, the center said the reason was tied to a confidentiality agreement with the vendor. Public health researchers speaking to The Independent noted that the report's definition of a 'serious adverse event' could include minor side effects, including routine bleeding, unrelated sexually transmitted infections, and routine follow-up visits. The report also lists ectopic pregnancies, which do not result from mifepristone use, as serious adverse events. Citing insurance data, they said their analysis had found 10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or another 'serious adverse event' within a period of 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. 'This study is the statistical equivalent of a category 5 hurricane hitting the prevailing narrative of the abortion industry,' Anderson said in a statement. 'Calling it a study would be too generous,' said Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a professor in the University of California-San Francisco's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. 'The fact that it's not peer-reviewed means that a lot of the methodological flaws were not corrected or were not addressed in the paper,' she told The Independent. The Independent has requested comment from the center. There were 36 reports of deaths associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000, according to the FDA. Those include two cases of pregnancy outside of the womb and several cases of sepsis. 'The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient,' the agency noted. A spokesperson for GenBioPro, the manufacturer of mifepristone, said the report is 'clearly flawed.' 'If this study isn't recognized widely for what it is – just another attempt by the anti-abortion movement to spread misinformation about the safety of the abortion pill using a bogus and biased study – Americans will be left with misleading information when they need to make critical health care and life decisions,' Emma Thomas told The Independent in an email. 'This is a report with no peer review, no transparency of methods. It comes out, and within days is cited at our highest levels of government to the person who makes decisions around regulation of medications,' said Heidi Moseson, a senior research scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health. 'And that suggests a very different pipeline of the way information is traveling with sort of egregious political motivation,' she told The Independent. A medication abortion typically involves a two-part protocol: mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone to stop a pregnancy from growing, followed by misoprostol, which helps the uterus contract. The medication is also frequently used for miscarriage treatment. Mifepristone was first approved for use by the FDA in most cases in 2000, and the drug is approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. A vast majority of all abortions occur within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. Roughly 63 percent of all abortions in the United States are medication abortions, the Guttmacher Institute says. From 2019 through 2020, nearly 93 percent of all abortions were performed before the 13th week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the FDA under President Joe Biden permanently lifted the in-person requirement for medication abortion prescriptions, allowing patients to access the drugs via telehealth appointments and online pharmacies so patients can take the drugs at home. In the years that followed, anti-abortion state legislators filed more than 100 bills to restrict access to abortion drugs, or sought to ban them altogether. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, more than a dozen states effectively outlawed all abortions in most circumstances. Months after that ruling, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit targeting mifepristone with a court in Amarillo, Texas, on behalf of a group of anti-abortion physicians, claiming the FDA wrongfully approved mifepristone and then improperly eliminated requirements that the drug should only be dispensed in person. Trump-appointed District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who had formerly worked as a chief counsel with right-wing Christian legal activist group First Liberty Institute, later issued a ruling to suspend the FDA's approval of the drug, but the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his decision. Whether the FDA under the Trump administration can now simply swap underlying data with another is 'the million dollar question,' according to Upadhyay. 'As a scientist, it's really concerning and devastating to see what is meant to be a system to keep people safe and understand true health risks weaponized in this moment to further restrict people's access to really essential healthcare,' Moseson said.
The Independent
24-05-2025
- Health
- The Independent
Millions of women use abortion drugs safely. Experts warn anti-abortion groups are pushing ‘bogus' science to get them banned
A dubious report from anti-abortion activists that casts doubt on the safety of a widely used abortion drug is now in the hands of top health officials in President Donald Trump 's administration. Abortion rights advocates and public health researchers have roundly condemned the report as an unscientific and politically motivated attempt to undermine the drug approval process for mifepristone, commonly used in medication abortions, which make up a vast majority of all abortions in the United States. Anti-abortion activists and influential right-wing legal groups have spent years suing the federal government in an attempt to cut off Americans' access to mifepristone, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration more than 20 years ago. Now, those groups appear to have launched a backdoor effort to replace the FDA's data altogether. 'This is one paper based on shoddy research methods to replace decades of safety and efficacy research,' according to Amy Friedrich-Karnik, director of federal policy for reproductive health research group the Guttmacher Institute. 'It's absolutely not legitimate for that one paper to displace decades of medical research,' she told The Independent. 'Can the FDA do it? I mean, an FDA that followed science and rigor absolutely would not do that. I think the question here is, how politicized will the FDA get?' Last month, Trump's FDA Commissioner Marty Makary said he had no plans to change the government's position on mifepristone unless new data discovered a safety concern. Days later, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a right-wing think tank, released a report claiming serious complications from mifepristone use were 22 times higher than previously reported. It called on the FDA to 'further investigate the harm mifepristone causes to women' and 'reconsider its approval altogether.' Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley – whose wife, Erin Hawley, is a senior counsel with the right-wing legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, which is suing the government over mifepristone — then called on Makary to 'follow this new data.' Hawley also recently introduced legislation to 'reinstate safety regulations on the chemical abortion drug mifepristone.' Under questions from Hawley in a Senate committee hearing this month, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr called the report's alleged findings 'alarming.' 'Clearly, it indicates that, at the very least, the label should be changed,' Kennedy said. He asked Makary 'to do a complete review and to report back.' During a Senate hearing on May 22, Democratic Sen. Patty Murray told Makary that the administration is 'laying the groundwork to rip away access to medication abortion across the country.' This 'has not gotten enough attention, and I know you'd prefer to keep it that way,' she said. Makary said he still has not read the center's study, which was not peer-reviewed nor published in a medical journal. Dozens of peer-reviewed studies over the last two decades have shown that fewer than 0.5 percent of patients who take mifepristone have serious adverse reactions. The center's report claims that number is more like 11 percent. The study, first disseminated by conservative and religious media outlets last month, was authored by a group that aims to push back against the 'extreme progressive agenda while building a consensus for conservatives.' The center was on the advisory board of Project 2025, which provided a blueprint for the Trump administration. Its authors include the center's Director of Data Analysis Jamie Bryan Hall and President Ryan Anderson. Hall was a research fellow at The Heritage Foundation: the think tank that organized Project 2025. Anderson is the co-author of five books, including Tearing US Apart: How Abortion Harms Everything and Solves Nothing. The pair cited the work of a 'team of data scientists, analysts, and engineers' who were assisted by their own 'clinical team of board-certified obstetricians and gynecologists.' Members have a 'history of academic research and peer-reviewed publication,' Hall and Anderson wrote. They claimed to have reviewed 865,727 insurance claims from women who were prescribed the drug, but the report does not disclose which database was used. According to The Washington Post, the center said the reason was tied to a confidentiality agreement with the vendor. Public health researchers speaking to The Independent noted that the report's definition of a 'serious adverse event' could include minor side effects, including routine bleeding, unrelated sexually transmitted infections, and routine follow-up visits. The report also lists ectopic pregnancies, which do not result from mifepristone use, as serious adverse events. Citing insurance data, they said their analysis had found 10.93 percent of women experience sepsis, infection, hemorrhaging or another 'serious adverse event' within a period of 45 days following a mifepristone abortion. 'This study is the statistical equivalent of a category 5 hurricane hitting the prevailing narrative of the abortion industry,' Anderson said in a statement. 'Calling it a study would be too generous,' said Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a professor in the University of California-San Francisco's Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Sciences. 'The fact that it's not peer-reviewed means that a lot of the methodological flaws were not corrected or were not addressed in the paper,' she told The Independent. The Independent has requested comment from the center. There were 36 reports of deaths associated with mifepristone since the product was approved in September 2000, according to the FDA. Those include two cases of pregnancy outside of the womb and several cases of sepsis. 'The adverse events cannot with certainty be causally attributed to mifepristone because of concurrent use of other drugs, other medical or surgical treatments, co-existing medical conditions and information gaps about patient health status and clinical management of the patient,' the agency noted. A spokesperson for GenBioPro, the manufacturer of mifepristone, said the report is 'clearly flawed.' 'If this study isn't recognized widely for what it is – just another attempt by the anti-abortion movement to spread misinformation about the safety of the abortion pill using a bogus and biased study – Americans will be left with misleading information when they need to make critical health care and life decisions,' Emma Thomas told The Independent in an email. 'This is a report with no peer review, no transparency of methods. It comes out, and within days is cited at our highest levels of government to the person who makes decisions around regulation of medications,' said Heidi Moseson, a senior research scientist at Ibis Reproductive Health. 'And that suggests a very different pipeline of the way information is traveling with sort of egregious political motivation,' she told The Independent. A medication abortion typically involves a two-part protocol: mifepristone, which blocks the hormone progesterone to stop a pregnancy from growing, followed by misoprostol, which helps the uterus contract. The medication is also frequently used for miscarriage treatment. Mifepristone was first approved for use by the FDA in most cases in 2000, and the drug is approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy. A vast majority of all abortions occur within the first nine weeks of pregnancy. Roughly 63 percent of all abortions in the United States are medication abortions, the Guttmacher Institute says. From 2019 through 2020, nearly 93 percent of all abortions were performed before the 13th week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, the FDA under President Joe Biden permanently lifted the in-person requirement for medication abortion prescriptions, allowing patients to access the drugs via telehealth appointments and online pharmacies so patients can take the drugs at home. In the years that followed, anti-abortion state legislators filed more than 100 bills to restrict access to abortion drugs, or sought to ban them altogether. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wad e in 2022, more than a dozen states effectively outlawed all abortions in most circumstances. Months after that ruling, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit targeting mifepristone with a court in Amarillo, Texas, on behalf of a group of anti-abortion physicians, claiming the FDA wrongfully approved mifepristone and then improperly eliminated requirements that the drug should only be dispensed in person. Trump-appointed District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who had formerly worked as a chief counsel with right-wing Christian legal activist group First Liberty Institute, later issued a ruling to suspend the FDA's approval of the drug, but the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his decision. Whether the FDA under the Trump administration can now simply swap underlying data with another is 'the million dollar question,' according to Upadhyay. 'As a scientist, it's really concerning and devastating to see what is meant to be a system to keep people safe and understand true health risks weaponized in this moment to further restrict people's access to really essential healthcare,' Moseson said.
21-05-2025
- Health
A Texas effort to clarify abortion ban reaches a key vote, but doubts remain
AUSTIN, Texas -- Three years ago, Dr. Austin Dennard left Texas for an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with a fatal condition. She later testified in a lawsuit how the state's near-total ban on abortion put her health at risk. On Wednesday, a key vote is scheduled on a bill that aims to clarify medical exceptions under one of the nation's most restrictive bans. But Dennard's feelings are mixed about the bill, which does not list specific medical conditions or include fatal fetal anomalies as exceptions. 'What is broadly now known among practicing physicians in Texas is that abortions are illegal,' said Dennard, an OB-GYN in Dallas. 'Undoing that broad understanding is going to be difficult.' For the first time since Texas' abortion ban took effect in 2022, both Republicans and Democrats are coalescing behind legislation to clarify medical exceptions. For Republicans, the bill is a significant pivot after years of defending the ban in the face of legal challenges, while some abortion-rights supporters have questioned whether it will make a difference. The bill would specify that doctors cannot face criminal charges for performing an abortion in a medical emergency that causes major bodily impairment, and it defines a 'life-threatening' condition as one capable of causing death. It would not broaden exceptions to include cases of rape or incest. The bill, which passed the Senate last month, could advance to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott as soon as Wednesday if approved by the GOP-controlled Texas House. Similar near-total abortion bans across the country have faced numerous legal challenges and criticism from medical professionals who have said that medical exceptions are too vague. Lawmakers in at least nine states with abortion bans have sought to change or clarify medical exceptions that allow doctors to perform an abortion if the mother's life is at risk since Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. Supporters of these bills have said they have the potential to save lives. Critics, including some abortion rights groups, have questioned whether they make state abortion laws easier to understand. In Kentucky, Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear earlier this year vetoed a bill that GOP lawmakers touted as bringing clarity to that state's near-total abortion ban, saying it would not protect pregnant women. Republican lawmakers later overrode his veto. Last year, South Dakota released a video for physicians that outlined examples of acceptable medical emergencies that received criticism from abortion rights supporters for not being specific enough. 'I think these bills are trying to get at the reality that exceptions are really hard to comply with," said Kimya Forouzan, principal state policy adviser at the Guttmacher Institute. Still, Texas Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes, an architect of the state's abortion ban, said the new bill's goal is to avoid confusion among doctors. 'One of the most important things we want to do is to make sure that doctors and hospitals and the hospital lawyers are trained on what the law is,' Hughes said. In 2024, the Texas Supreme Court ruled against Dennard and a group of women who say they were denied an abortion after experiencing serious pregnancy complications that threatened their lives and fertility. The court ruled that the state's laws were clear in allowing doctors to perform an abortion to save the life of the mother. Texas' efforts underscore the challenges abortion opponents have had to navigate regarding medical exceptions, said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law and a historian of abortion politics in the U.S. Judges have put enforcement of Utah's abortion ban on hold in a case over exceptions, for example, and they struck down two Oklahoma bans over medical exceptions – though most abortions in that state remain illegal. For abortion opponents, Ziegler said, it's tricky to craft legislation that does two different things. 'Can you provide clear guidance as to when medical intervention is justified without providing physicians discretion to provide abortions they don't think are emergencies?' Ziegler said. Texas' ban prohibits nearly all abortions, except to save the life of the mother, and doctors can be fined up to $100,000 and face up to 99 years in prison if convicted of performing an abortion illegally. Attorney General Ken Paxton's office has filed criminal charges against a midwife for allegedly providing illegal abortions and is also suing a New York doctor for prescribing abortion pills to a Texas woman. Texas Republicans are also advancing efforts to make it a civil offense to mail, deliver or manufacture abortion pills, expanding on a 2021 law that allows private individuals to sue others whom they suspect are helping a woman obtain an abortion. ___
