The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) sent a reminder to drug providers stating that abortion pills are still prohibited by law in pharmacies and that the infractions could generate “criminal sanctions”, according to a local media.
According to WLRN-FM, the main public radio station for southern
Florida and the Keys, with headquarters in Miami, the AHCA sent an email to drug providers to alert them to compliance with the law, despite the fact that a recent federal decision allows expanding access to abortion pills in pharmacies.
On January 3, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), in charge of issuing permits for the marketing of medicines, updated its regulations on mifepristone abortion pills to allow their sale in pharmacy chains, like CVS or Walgreens.
Under the new guidelines, pharmacies can offer the medicine if it has been prescribed by a doctor and they meet certain requirements, unlike what has been happening up to now, where only certified physicians and clinics could dispense it.
Mifepristone, approved in 2000 by the FDA, can be used to terminate a pregnancy before the end of the third month of pregnancy and, according to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions with this type of medication have accounted for 54% of pregnancy interruptions. in the US in the last two years.
(You can read: What changes does the sale of abortion pills in US pharmacies bring?)
Protests in favor of the right to abortion in the United States.
In Florida, however, patients cannot get the pills at a pharmacy or have them mailed to them. Instead, they must schedule two appointments with a doctor at a licensed facility and obtain the two-pill protocol from the specialist.
The first pill must be taken in front of the doctor, emphasizes WLRN-FM.
Activists defending access to abortion in the US warned this Wednesday of an offensive by anti-abortionists against pills that allow the termination of pregnancy.
(Furthermore: France: deputies approve inscribing the right to abortion in the Constitution)
The director of the EMAA Project, Kirsten Moore, said in a telephone press conference that seven months after the Supreme Court withdrew the legal guarantees of the right to abortion in the US they are seeing how anti-abortionists now target abortion medication.
In this sense, he indicated that there are attempts that seek to ban medicines approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
People in almost half the country will live in states hostile to abortion care and will be forced to travel to other states
Moore indicated that politicians in 19 states of the country have prohibited telematic medical consultations related to the abortion pill. “It is unprecedented for politicians to revoke the authority of the FDA and block access to FDA-approved medication,” she lamented.
He added that anti-abortionists are threatening to organize protests against pharmacies that offer the abortion pill to “create an environment of fear and intimidation as they have done for decades outside clinics” that offer abortion services.
Moore also recalled that critics of that right have filed a lawsuit in a Texas court to force a nationwide ban on abortion.
Pro-abortion women protest after US Supreme Court ruling
Samuel Corum/Bloomberg
The president of “All * Above All”, Morgan Hopkins, for her part, drew a map of the restrictions on abortion in the country and indicated that this procedure “is prohibited or not available in 21 states”.
(Keep reading: Joe Biden says his 2023 legislative priority will be to protect abortion)
Likewise, there are three other states where it is possible to be prohibited, Montana, Nebraska and Iowa: “This means that people in almost half the country will live in states hostile to abortion care and will be forced to travel to other states, sometimes to thousands of miles,” he warned.
Next Sunday will be the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s “Roe v. Wade” ruling that legalized abortion in the US in 1973.although this sentence was revoked by the court itself, currently with a conservative majority, last June.
*With information from AFP and EFE
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