ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – While abortion law debates heat up at the Roundhouse, New Mexico’s lead lawyer is looking to ease restrictions on abortion medication. The state is joining others in accusing the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of unnecessary delay in allowing access to a drug.
A multistate lawsuit alleges that the FDA has improperly restricted abortion access by limiting who can prescribe and dispense mifepristone, part of a two-part regimen to end pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation, according to the complaint filed in federal court. The states, including New Mexico, claim that the FDA’s restriction “has no basis in science” and that “it only serves to make mifepristone harder for doctors to prescribe, harder for pharmacies to fill, harder for patients to access.”
States taking on the FDA include Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and others. Of course, now New Mexico has joined as well.
“Adding special restrictions to a completely safe medication is the opposite of what this country needs right now in terms of reproductive rights and healthcare,” New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez said in a press release. “I am proud to join these 10 states in the fight against limiting healthcare options. The newly added process and requirements that the FDA has placed on this safe medication have a harmful effect on communities of color and go against what experts have concluded about mifepristone.”
The states also take issue with the fact that the FDA requires certain documentation to dispense the medication. Such documentation could be used to intimidate or threaten people seeking or aiding abortions, according to a press release from the Attorney General’s office.
The FDA originally approved the name-brand version of the drug in 2000. Since then, the agency has re-evaluated the restrictions. But attorneys general from multiple states claim the most recent rules are too restrictive.
