Planned Parenthood has begun prescribing abortion pills to women before they get pregnant, defying the Food and Drug Administration’s safety protocol and heightening concerns about the drugs being used by bad actors to induce non-consensual abortions.
The Seattle-based Planned Parenthood affiliate launched the “Just in Case” program last week in Hawaii and Washington, saying the service is intended to “offer peace of mind for patients who are not currently pregnant and want to keep abortion medication on-hand.”
“At Planned Parenthood, we are committed to getting patients the care they need, when — and before — they need it,” said Rebecca Gibron, CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana, Kentucky, in a May 21 statement.
“We’re incredibly proud to be launching Just In Case Abortion Pills — the next step in making abortion care more accessible, more convenient, and more responsive to the realities of patients’ lives,” she said. “When someone does not want to be pregnant, timing matters. Just In Case Abortion Pills gives that person the ability to act quickly and confidently.”
Planned Parenthood said the two-pill regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol is available to clients 18 and older to abort pregnancies up to 12 weeks’ gestation, even though the FDA has only approved mifepristone for pregnancies up to 10 weeks’ gestation.
Pro-life advocates decried the “Just in Case” program, accusing Planned Parenthood of skirting federal safety rules in the interest of growing its business.
“If there was ever a question in anyone’s mind about Planned Parenthood’s priorities, this settles it,” Kelsey Pritchard, SBA Pro-Life American spokesperson, told The Washington Times.
“Their goal is more profit and more dead babies. If that means more women going to the ER with deadly side effects from mifepristone or more abusers getting ahold of abortion drugs to poison women, so be it,” she said.
The pro-life group Live Action pointed out that the FDA has not specifically approved mifepristone for “advance provision,” as the practice is known.
“To be approved to prescribe the abortion pill (mifepristone 200mg/Mifeprex), prescribers must be able to properly date a pregnancy,” said Live Action in a May 22 website post.
“Selling abortion pills ’just in case’ a woman gets pregnant, in advance of a pregnancy, is clearly ignoring the intent of the FDA’s safety requirement,” the group said.
Under the FDA’s Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy for mifepristone, prescribers must be able to determine gestational age, rule out ectopic pregnancy, and render surgical intervention in emergencies.
“Obviously, the abortion drug’s prescriber can do none of those things when he ships the drugs before a woman is pregnant and no one knows the circumstances in which she will take the drug,” said Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute.
That said, Planned Parenthood isn’t breaking new ground. More than two dozen online abortion-pill businesses are already shipping abortion pills to women without asking whether they are pregnant, according to a Tuesday report by the Lozier Institute.
The difference is that those companies don’t necessarily receive federal funding.
Planned Parenthood, which collected $832 million in federal grants, contracts and Medicaid reimbursements in fiscal 2023-24, is scheduled to have its Medicaid eligibility resume July 5 after a one-year freeze.
Live Action called for Congress to renew its defunding of Planned Parenthood and for the FDA to take action.
“Acting FDA Commissioner Kyle Diamantas should demand that Planned Parenthood and anyone else violating the REMS requirements on the abortion pill be immediately decertified,” said the organization.
The Washington Times has reached out to the FDA for comment.
Adding Planned Parenthood to the list of providers that allow abortion-pill stockpiling also increases the risks of the drugs winding up in the wrong hands.
Cases of women losing their pregnancies after being slipped abortion pills by boyfriends or husbands began climbing after the Biden-era FDA eliminated the in-person dispensing requirement, allowing the drugs to be prescribed by telehealth and delivered by mail.
That number doesn’t include women forced into human-trafficking and prostitution rings.
“Planned Parenthood is now offering ‘Just In Case Abortion Pills’ for women to stockpile in Washington and Hawaii for women who are not even pregnant yet,” said Students for Life of America in a Tuesday post on X. “Just think for a second about how abusers and human traffickers will utilize this to keep their crimes hidden.”
Ms. Gibron acknowledged that the growing popularity of “advance provision” pills helped prod Planned Parenthood into the market.
“As evidence supporting this model of care has continued to grow, and with supportive policy environments in Washington and in Hawai’i, this really is the right time for us to step into this space,” she told NPR.
The “Just in Case” program is available via in-person and telehealth appointments at the Planned Parenthood affiliate’s 16 locations in those two states.
