Laws That Hurt Women: Dangerous Anti-Choice Policies in Texas and Ohio May Have Damaged Women’s Health
This summer the Supreme Court rejected this argument, overturning a series of abortion restrictions in Texas on the grounds that the state had done nothing to show that these regulations improved the quality of women’s health care. But now research in two states — Texas and Ohio — has gone a step further, showing that anti-choice regulations have caused substantial harm to women’s health care, raising the rates of complications. These stricter rules may even be related to a surge in maternal mortality.
In 2004, under the guise of advancing women’s health, Ohio passed a law requiring women who are seeking a medication abortion to use an outdated method that the Food and Drug Administration had recommended in the early days that it approved a drug regimen. While the original method that the FDA recommended worked to terminate pregnancies, doctors and then researchers quickly discovered a better, safer way to administer the drugs, one that lowered the dose of the first pill a woman would take (mifepristone) and raised the dose of the second pill she would need (misoprostol).
“The clinical research done since medication abortion was first approved in 2000 has really refined the best dosages, timing and administration of these two drugs,” Dr. Ushma Upadhyay explained via email. “The updated protocol is more effective and leads to fewer side effects.”