The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Dec. 16 that it is lifting a requirement that patients seeking medication abortion had to pick up the medication in personand allowing pills to be sent by mail, CNN.com reported.
The move comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is seemingly poised to undo its abortion rights precedent.
Relaxing the federal restrictions on medication abortion is one thing the Biden administration could do to mitigate the fallout from a Roe v. Wade reversal. However, red states are already planning to counteract what the federal government has opted to do.
Medication abortion, in which a pregnancy is ended in a two-pill process, has become a prevalent approach to terminating a pregnancy. The FDA first approved the drug mifepristonewhen coupled with the drug misoprostolfor abortion use in 2000. The use of the method has steadily grown and it now makes up more than half of the abortions that occur before nine weeks into pregnancy, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.