Doctors at online and brick and mortar primary care companies are slowly starting to prescribe medication abortion pills via telemedicine in states where it’s still legal following the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision ending the constitutional right to the procedure.
The FDA has yet to update its rules to make way for large retail pharmacies to dispense medication abortion, limiting how patients can get pills. In the meantime, these companies are leaning on two mail-order pharmacies to fill their prescriptions.
“I don’t know, what’s taking them so long to come up with this plan,” said Ushma Upadhyay, director of research of the University of California Global Health Institute’s Center of Expertise in Women’s Health, Gender, and Empowerment.
Last year, the FDA made the companies’ plans possible when the agency permitted doctors to prescribe mifepristone — the first of two pills patients take in the medication abortion regimen — via telemedicine and to ship it in the mail. But the FDA could reverse course if an anti-abortion president were to win election.
“Post-Roe America demands that we reimagine where and how abortion care is delivered,” said Carolyn Witte, the co-founder and CEO of Tia, which provides telehealth appointments and abortion pills in California and New York. “We must shift from a siloed approach where abortion is treated as a separate issue to a whole women’s health care model.”
Though primary care doctors could provide medication abortion, many are reluctant to do so. That’s because of the FDA’s certification rules for mifepristone distributors, the need to store the pills, the controversy surrounding abortion, and the possibility of being targeted by anti-abortion activists.
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