Legion Troll
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New recommendations for the abortion pill announced Wednesday by the Food and Drug Administration could increase use of the medication to terminate a pregnancy in the United States.
The new label changes the recommended dosage of the two drugs used in the abortion process. It allows the treatment to be used up to 70 days into pregnancy — three weeks longer than the previous guidelines. It also relaxes prescriber guidelines to allow, for example, a nurse practitioner to administer the drugs.
The reality in practice will not change for most abortion patients, as doctors for years have been legally diverging from the old FDA protocol based on new research. But a handful of states, including Texas and Ohio, have laws requiring abortion providers to adhere at least in part to the FDA-approved label, leading some providers there to all but abandon the use of the abortion pill.
“The label change for medication abortion will mean that it will once again be a real option for Preterm’s patients and women across the state,” Chrisse France, executive director of Preterm, an abortion provider in Ohio, said in a statement. “We will no longer be forced to practice medicine mandated by politicians whose ultimate goal is to shut us down.”
The label change is effective immediately. It applies to Mifeprex, which is the brand name for mifepristone, one of the two drugs used in medication abortions. It blocks the production of progesterone, a hormone that prepares the lining of the uterus for a fertilized egg. A day or two after taking that drug, the woman takes the second drug, misoprostol, which causes the uterus to contract and expel the pregnancy.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fda-updates-recommendations-for-abortion-pill/2016/03/30/426407de-f681-11e5-8b23-538270a1ca31_story.html
