Wyoming on Friday became the first US state to outlaw mifepristone, commonly known as the abortion pill, outside of an overall abortion ban. Wyoming’s ban is just one of several new efforts across the nation to ban access to abortion — or severely punish those who seek abortion care.
With surgical abortion already difficult if not impossible to access in Wyoming, medication abortion was essentially the only option for abortion care in the state.
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer, states like Wyoming, South Carolina, and Texas have made repeated attempts on abortion rights, with varying degrees of success. Wyoming outlawed abortion via a trigger ban passed before the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs v. Jackson case, although it is currently being challenged in court. Anti-abortion legislation has proven unpopular and complicated to enact in several states, opening the door for extreme workarounds like Wyoming’s.
All forms of abortion are illegal in twelve states, including medication abortion. But Wyoming is the first state to criminalize the use of the abortion pill outside a full ban going into effect. Medication, or self-managed, abortion can be a preferred option for terminating a pregnancy up to 10 weeks because it can be taken at home — especially important in states and situations where surgical abortion is hard to access — it’s safe, and is less expensive than surgical abortion.
That option is now gone in Wyoming, and could be eliminated or curtailed throughout the country depending on the outcome of a federal court case in Texas. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed judge with ties to conservative groups, is presently hearing an argument in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine vs. FDA that mifepristone is unsafe, despite the fact that it has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for more than 20 years. Kacsmaryk is expected to order the FDA to withdraw its approval of the drug, leading to a lengthy…
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