{"id":243706,"date":"2021-05-18T11:40:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-18T16:40:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liveaction.org\/news\/?p=243706"},"modified":"2021-05-17T12:37:23","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T17:37:23","slug":"double-providers-abortion-pill-safety-removed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.liveaction.org\/news\/double-providers-abortion-pill-safety-removed\/","title":{"rendered":"Abortion industry hopes to ‘double’ number of providers if abortion pill safety standards are removed"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The COVID-19 pandemic has been used as an excuse<\/a> to expand access to the abortion pill by\u00a0mail order<\/a>\u00a0and pharmacy, though efforts toward this goal have been in the works for far longer. Now, some are claiming that “abortion stigma” is part of the reason many doctors are hesitant to prescribe the abortion pill<\/a>.\u00a0The abortion industry has known for years that medical staffers were reluctant to sign up to stock the abortion pill and become prescribers and did not want to stock the abortion pill. To resolve this decades old problem, the abortion industry believes lifting the FDA’s REMS will decrease the “stigma” and double the number of abortion providers who offer the deadly drug.<\/p>\n

In 2016, Danco’s\u00a0director of marketing and public affairs, Abigail Long,\u00a0told<\/a> Forbes,\u00a0“I think the power of [abortion] stigma cannot be underscored enough in terms of the impact it has had on being able to access abortion care.”\u00a0Forbes identified additional reasons for prescriber hesitancy on the abortion pill, including local abortion restrictions, a rise in malpractice insurance, and friend or family opposition to abortion.\u00a0“It’s easy to say that the REMS is a big part of it, but I don’t think it’s the only piece,” Long added.<\/p>\n

Currently, under the abortion pill’s\u00a0safety requirement<\/a> (REMS), put in place by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), women can only obtain the abortion pill with\u00a0an in-person visit to a certified prescriber<\/em> of the drug. To become certified, prescribers must have the ability to accurately assess the duration of a pregnancy and diagnose an ectopic pregnancy.\u00a0The REMS safety regulations\u00a0require<\/a> providers to sign the manufacturer’s\u00a0prescribers agreement<\/a> and they must stock the drug, since it currently cannot be dispensed in a pharmacy.<\/p>\n

However, in\u00a0April of 2021, the Biden FDA issued a\u00a0temporary change<\/a>\u00a0allowing the dispensing of the abortion pill by mail<\/em> under the guise of COVID-19 pandemic. Last summer, Live Action News documented<\/a>\u00a0a revised court decision, which also enabled the abortion pill to be distributed without an in-person visit during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter,\u00a0a number<\/a> of unregulated and often clandestine<\/a> virtual abortion pill dispensaries have popped up around the country to cash in.<\/p>\n

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Abortion Pill REMS requirements by FDA (Image: FDA website accessed 5\/11\/21)<\/p><\/div>\n

Physicians hesitant about abortion pill from the start<\/strong><\/p>\n

Early on, abortion advocates identified additional obstacles.\u00a0One was that physicians did not want to sign the prescriber agreement for fear that the list, which was maintained by Danco Laboratories, would eventually become public.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Vox.com<\/a>\u00a0spoke to Dr. Karen Meckstroth<\/a>, who\u00a0acknowledged that a big deterrent for many doctors in dispensing the abortion pill was that, \u201cPeople are afraid they\u2019re on a list.\u201d Meckstroth is the\u00a0director<\/a>\u00a0of Women\u2019s Options Center at UCSF, which\u00a0commits<\/a>\u00a0abortion up to the\u00a023rd week<\/a>\u00a0of pregnancy. It is one of the\u00a0sites<\/a>\u00a0for a pharmacy-dispensed abortion pill clinical trial.<\/p>\n

Secondly, many doctors were unwilling to stock the abortion pill even if willing to prescribe it. The\u00a0Washington Post\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0 in 2001:<\/p>\n

At one time, the most ambitious argument for RU-486 was that it would move abortion away from clinics (and clinic protesters) and into the offices of more private OB-GYNs and family practitioners. But there have been signs all along that this is not likely: In a survey conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation, doctors tended to be less willing to administer RU-486 the more they knew about it. <\/em><\/p>\n

Their concerns weren’t so much medical as procedural… doctors who offer it also must be able to provide a surgical abortion or be affiliated with a doctor who can. And they must purchase the drug up front.<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2016, Forbes reiterated<\/a> the concern, writing, “The thought was that doctors \u2014 mainly obstetrician\/gynecologists and family practitioners \u2014 who didn’t perform surgical abortions… would add medication abortions with Mifeprex… to the services they offered.”<\/p>\n

But they did not. According to Long<\/a>, Danco representatives regularly encounter physicians who say they simply send their patients to Planned Parenthood. The ACOG’s Green Journal, in a\u00a0cross-sectional 2016-17 survey<\/a>\u00a0from a national sample of ACOG Fellows,\u00a0found:<\/p>\n