When Lupe took her first dose, two hundred milligrams of mifepristone, she prayed that she would not have any complications. She popped the pill and lay down on her bed. After reviewing Lupe`s medical history, Gomperts told her she had a slightly higher risk of complications from a C-section six years earlier, at the end of a traumatic pregnancy, when she was just twenty years old. Another Texas law, SB 4, which went into effect in December, bans abortion pills and telemedicine consultations for abortions. Anyone who prescribes the drug by telemedicine or mail is liable to imprisonment and a $10,000 fine. Lupe`s experience underscores the predicament these new laws have imposed on Texas women, though it also highlights how the provisions of SB 4 are likely to be unenforceable. “Everyone was so upset about SB 8 that they paid little attention to SB 4, and that`s a mistake,” said Mary Ziegler, a Florida law professor specializing in the legal history of reproduction and author of three books on the impact of Roe v. Wade. “This fight is about access, and medical abortion is a big part of the endgame for those working to fully criminalize abortion. When Roe v. Wade will fall, it will be the next battlefield. BURNETT – Texas` strict anti-abortion law gave women in the Rio Grande Valley a taste of a post-Roe world, but activists resisted.
Nancy Cardenas-Pena is the Texas State Director for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice. “One could assume that the crime took place in the state of Texas if the medical abortion is taken in Texas,” Sepper said. “You could say it`s the scene of the crime; when the fetus or embryo is dead. In fact, in Texas, it remains legal for pregnant women to use abortion pills to terminate their pregnancies, regardless of how they received them. SB 4 exempts these users from criminal sanctions. The penalties of the law apply only to suppliers. But Farah Diaz-Tello, an attorney at If/When/How, a national nonprofit that provides legal advice and advocates for abortion seekers, says Texas` abortion laws have created “an aura of illegality” around abortion pills. “The fear of law enforcement alone will deter many people from using these drugs,” she says. ROBERTO DIAZ-GONZALEZ: The most common complication with the drug will probably be incomplete abortion. This means that not all fabrics are out.
And if the patient does not seek care, it can lead to infection. More than half of all abortions in the United States are known as “medical abortions,” according to the Guttmacher Institute. People finish their pregnancy at home by taking a combination of two pills, and these pills can easily be sent in the mail. How would Texas regulate these types of abortions if Roe v. Wade fell? “The abortion-related mortality rate is lower than that of colonoscopy, plastic surgery, dental procedures, and tonsillectomy in adults,” Howard said. “Abortion is much safer than carrying a pregnancy to term and giving birth. A first trimester abortion is one of the safest medical procedures, with less than 0.05% risk of major complications. “Under SB4, a person who takes abortion medication does not commit a crime. The law only prosecutes suppliers. That wouldn`t change if Roe was overthrown.
Suppliers remain the target. Grossman said the pills are very safe from a medical standpoint. “But I have real concerns about the legal risks that patients can take,” he said. The new law reduces the window in which doctors can administer abortion-inducing drugs to patients from 10 weeks to seven weeks after pregnancy, contrary to FDA guidelines. Haven`t these laws been struck down by the Supreme Court? The Supreme Court struck down two of Texas` anti-abortion laws in 2016: a law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have privileges at a local hospital and a law requiring abortion clinics to turn into ambulatory surgical centers, which are essentially mini-hospitals. The court ruled that these laws had nothing to do with health or safety and only served to block access to abortion. NANCY CARDENAS PENA: People in the red states still deserve access to abortion treatment, so we will continue to fight every step of the way in areas like the Rio Grande Valley. However, several peer-reviewed medical studies have found low rates of complications when women who do not have abnormal pregnancies take the drug within the FDA-approved ten-week window. A 2017 report in the British journal BMJ concluded that about 95 percent of the medical abortions in the study were successful without surgery. A 2020 study published in the journal Contraception found that less than one percent of medical abortions resulted in excessive bleeding requiring emergency intervention.
“Claims that this form of access is dangerous are obviously false,” says Ushma Upadhyay, a professor of public health at the University of California, San Francisco who specializes in reproductive medicine. “Programs like Aid Access are not FDA approved, but they are medically safe.” Texas abortion providers have filed an urgent petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to try to stop law enforcement. However, in a 5-4 decision, the justices refused to block the Texas law and instead let it go into effect while a lower court decides whether it is legal. Will an abortion put me at increased risk of breast cancer? No. Although Texas requires your doctor to read you a statement suggesting that there is an increased risk of breast cancer after an abortion, this is simply not true.