Three states are renewing a legal push to restrict access to the abortion medication mifepristone, including reinstating requirements it be dispensed in person instead of by mail. The request from Kansas, Idaho and Missouri filed Friday would bar the drug’s use after seven weeks of pregnancy instead of 10 and require three in-person doctor office visits instead of none in the latest attempt to make it harder to get a drug that's used in most abortions nationally. The filing seeking to sue the U.
S. Food and Drug Administration was made in a federal court in Texas where the case was returned after the U.S.
Supreme Court in June unanimously agreed to keep federal changes that eased access to the medication. In that ruling, the high court did not tackle the merits of the approval but rather said that anti-abortion doctors and their organizations lacked the legal right to sue. The justices also previously refused the states’ push to intervene in the case.
The states argue they have legal standing because access to the pills “undermine state abortion laws and frustrate state law enforcement,” they wrote in court documents. They are now making a more modest but still far-reaching request instead: that the courts return the restrictions around the drug to where they were before the FDA relaxed them in 2016 and 2021. The relaxed rules also allow care providers such as nurse practitioners to prescribe the drugs in addition to doctors.
Medication abortions — usually using mife.
