A group of House Democrats pressed the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Tuesday to lift \u201cmedically unnecessary\u201d restriction on the abortion pill that have been in place for several years.<\/p>\n
Under the FDA rule, mifepristone, which is used to end early pregnancies and treat early pregnancy loss, can only be dispensed in person, a requirement that has received renewed criticism during the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cImposing this requirement in the midst of a deadly pandemic \u2014 one that has disproportionately impacted communities of color across the United States \u2014 needlessly places patients and providers in harm\u2019s way, and further entrenches longstanding health inequities,\u201d Chair\u00a0Carolyn Maloney<\/a>\u00a0(N.Y.) and other Democrats on the House Oversight and Reform Committee\u00a0wrote in a letter<\/a>\u00a0to acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock.<\/p>\n Why now?\u00a0<\/strong>Doctors and abortion rights groups have said for years that the in-person distribution requirement for\u00a0mifepristone is medically unnecessary and should be removed. But the pandemic renewed the fight when the FDA paused similar requirements for other drugs but not mifepristone.<\/p>\n A legal battle ensued, and while it is still ongoing, the lawsuit would be moot if the FDA \u2014 now under the Biden administration \u2014 suspended the requirement, notes the American Civil Liberties Union, which is leading the litigation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A group of House Democrats pressed...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31542,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31541\/revisions\/31542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}