Canada To Offer Mifepristone Abortion Pill if Drug is Banned in US

Canada says it can offer the mifepristone abortion pill
The situation comes after Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of an anti-abortion group
The group filed the lawsuit against the FDA, saying its approval of the drug was not safe

A Canadian official said they could offer the mifepristone abortion pill if the drug gets banned in the United States following a slew of legal challenges by anti-abortion groups.

The remarks come after Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said, in an Apr. 7 decision, reversed the drug's US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. This ruling favored Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group that filed a lawsuit against the abortion pill.

Canada to Provide Access to Mifepristone

United States President Joe Biden's administration quickly worked to appeal the ruling, causing the case to go up to the Supreme Court. There, a judge issued an administrative stay that would last until the end of Friday, giving justices more time to consider the case, as per ABC News.

Canada's press secretary to Families Minister Karina Gould, Philippe-Alexandre Langlois, said that non-Canadians were welcome to get an abortion in the country. In a statement, he said that their government has and will always work to defend a woman's right to choose for her own body.

Langlois added that they have continuously taken action to protect that right and improve women's access to reproductive health services, including abortion. The statement added that in Canada, there were no restrictions or prohibitions placed on health care services for citizens of other countries.

The press secretary's remarks came after Gould on Thursday said Canada would "work to provide that for American women" when asked about the abortion pill. Mifepristone is a drug commonly used with a secondary pill, misoprostol, to induce an abortion or assist in managing an early miscarriage.

Criminalization of Getting an Abortion

Gould noted that laws that criminalized women crossing state borders to gain access to reproductive health care were concerning. She said that they need to be vigilant regarding the issue to keep it from becoming worse or endangering women looking to gain access to abortion or healthcare providers, according to CTV News.

When asked whether or not Canada has enough supply of the abortion pill for the possibility of non-Canadians flocking to buy them, Gould said that they were not there yet. She noted that it was a situation that the government was currently thinking about and was engaged with.

Mifepristone works by blocking a hormone known as progesterone, which is needed for a pregnancy to develop. The secondary drug, misoprostol, is the one that empties a woman's uterus. Studies in the United States have shown that the two-step medication regime was 95% effective.

The abortion pill was first approved in the US for the medical termination of pregnancy through seven weeks of gestation more than two decades ago. BBC said the approved use was extended in 2016 to 10 weeks of pregnancy.