Pacific Standard: An Update on Abortion Pills From the World Health Organization Undermines How the U.S. Regulates Them
“Abortion pills should be widely available and affordable, and don’t need to be dispensed by highly trained specialists or in specialty facilities, according to a World Health Organization update published last week. … The WHO has considered mifepristone and misoprostol ‘essential medicines’ since 2005, but in the recent update, WHO experts decided that they had enough scientific evidence to strike the caveat saying the medications require ‘close medical supervision.’ The change puts the United States’ strict regulations around abortion pills even further out of step with international guidelines, activists and scientists say. The WHO update isn’t legally binding, but many countries take the WHO essential medicines list seriously, so it may make mifepristone and misoprostol more readily available worldwide. In the U.S., however, not much is expected to change…” (Diep, 7/15).