ANALYSIS OF S.B. 658 (2012) (Restricts Women’s Access to Medication)
ANALYSIS OF S.B. 658 (Rupp) Restricts Women’s Access to Medication Abortions (significant amendment to current law on RU-486/Mifepristone/medication abortion) By Pamela L. Sumners, Esq. S.B. 658 contains new language that would make it the counterpart of H.B. 1274, Rep. Koenig’s proposed Abortion-Inducing Drugs Safety Act. The proposed language is clearly geared to averting any Telemed dispensation of RU-486 such as that of Iowa. Currently, RU-486, the medication abortion bill, is not available in United States pharmacies although it is available in pharmacies in Europe. The initial dose of the drug is administered in a hospital or clinic setting or doctor’s office at the present time in the United States. The bill’s contemplated requirement that any second dose also be administered in a physician’s personal presence may pose a health risk to the woman—since the products of conception may be start to be expelled at soon at 30 minutes after ingesting the drug. If a woman is driving, perhaps from a rural facility, this could be a profound health and safety risk. In addition, the proposed language contemplates that, if medication abortions are performed in an abortion clinic, the clinic must be licensed as an ambulatory surgical center if it performs second-or third-term abortions or more than five first-trimester abortions are induced. Essentially, this would mean that the physician at a clinic that provides abortion care have surgical privileges at a hospital within 30 miles of where the medication abortion was commenced and that the facility meet all physical specifications for a surgical facility even if surgeries are not performed—a burden on the practitioner and on women’s access to abortion. The burdens imposed are not rationally related to any legislative interest in women’s health and safety, given that medication abortion is an extremely safe procedure. The lack of a rational relationship between the ostensible objective of the law and the means of achieving this objective could provide grounds for a legal challenge and also could suggest, under current Supreme Court precedent, an undue burden on a woman’s fundamental right to earlier-term abortions.
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