Stateside with Kai and Carter: why the fight over abortion pills is only just beginning
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What is the current status of mail-order abortion pills in the U.S.?
This is The Guardian.
Hey, it's Carter Sherman here, host of The Guardian's new podcast Stateside with Kyan Carter. Today we're bringing you one of our latest episodes. It looks at why the political and legal fight over abortion pills in the U.S. is really just at the beginning. Listen on to hear the episode in full and find all of our shows every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on Apple Video Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you are hearing this.
What I see in terms of anti-abortion movement rhetoric is that I fear that there is going to be a continued push to criminalize the abortion patient. Ten years ago, this was almost unthinkable that the anti-abortion rights movement would say out loud that a strategy for reducing the number of abortions was to put abortion seekers or abortion patients in jail. But now we're seeing more and more of this conversation in the press, and we're also seeing state legislatures taking this up.
From The Guardian, this is Stateside. I'm Carter Sherman. I'm Kai Wright. Today, the fight over abortion pills is just beginning. Kai, as you know, before I entered the glorious world of podcasting with this show, I covered gender and sexuality for 10 years. So I wanted to bring you a fact you might not know. In the years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortions in the U.S. have actually gone up, not down. In 2024, for example, there were more than 1.1 million abortions in the United States, which is the highest number on record in recent years.
So I had heard they'd gone up, but I didn't realize by quite that much. Is that considered a surprising victory in the abortion rights movement?
Well, I think it speaks to the breadth and the depth of the organizing that advocates have undertaken in the years since Roe fell. In particular, advocates have worked very hard on expanding access to abortion pills, and they have started mailing pills into states with abortion bans so that even people who live under those bans can still end their pregnancies. For the anti-abortion movement, though, this isn't as essential a threat. And recently, the fight over abortion pills made its way all the way back up to the Supreme Court.
And when you say abortion pills, just so we can level set, what are we talking about?
Well, in a medication abortion, which is abortion that is mediated through drugs, there are two drugs that people tend to take. The first is called mifepristone. And you take one dose of it. 24 hours later, you take doses of a second drug called misoprostol. The mifepristone stops the pregnancy from growing. The misoprostol contracts the uterus so that it expels the pregnancy. And it is after that taking of the second drug, misoprostol, that people tend to have the side effects that you associate with an abortion. Got it. So bleeding, cramping, nausea, diarrhea, etc.
How has the anti-abortion movement changed its rhetoric?
So it's mifepristone and misoprostol, right? Which one of them is at stake now in the court fight?
OK, so that is mifepristone. Mifepristone is the drug that is at stake right now. Last year, Louisiana sued the FDA over the fact that it allows abortion providers to mail mifepristone. And on May 1st, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to pause mail order access to Mifepristone while litigation in Louisiana's case plays out.
Easily the most conservative court in the appeals circuit.
Absolutely. So what that means is that under the Fifth Circuit's ruling, no one can get access to mail order Mifepristone, including people who live in states that don't ban abortion, people who live in blue states who might think that their abortion rights are protected.
And are they arguing in court that they're doing this because mifepristone is unsafe? Is it a safety debate we're having here?
That argument has entered the chat, shall we say, but it's not really a good faith argument. Mifepristone and misoprostol are incredibly well-researched. More than 100 studies conducted across more than a dozen countries have found that when you use these two drugs to end a pregnancy, it is a safe and effective abortion method in the first trimester of pregnancy.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the current status of mail-order abortion pills in the U.S.?
0:00–3:00
2
How has the anti-abortion movement changed its rhetoric?
3:00–11:43
3
What are the two main drugs used in medication abortion?
11:43–15:39
4
Why is mifepristone currently at stake in legal battles?
15:39–24:53
5
What impact did the Supreme Court's recent ruling have on abortion access?
24:53–33:08
6
How are abortion providers adapting to legal restrictions?
33:08–42:29
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