Today at 1:30pm, the Alaska Senate Labor and Commerce Committee will hear invited testimony for a bill (SB 147) that opens up the ability for pharmacists to prescribe and dispense abortion pills. Although there may be some merit to giving pharmacists greater freedom to assist patients without engaging physicians, the bill needs to clarify with certainty that doesn’t include chemical abortion medication.
CLICK HERE to send a quick email to the Committee asking them to amend SB 147 to clarify that pharmacists should not be able to prescribe and dispense abortion pills.
Senator Cathy Giessel, the bill’s sponsor, has argued that pharmacists are already prohibited from prescribing and dispensing abortion medication under current Alaska statute but that is likely incorrect. Chemical abortions are considered a prescribed medication and not a procedure. The current language of the bill is written to amend the term “patient care services” to include the “prescription or administration of a drug or device to a patient…”
See more info below from a 2023 Press Release from Attorney General Treg Taylor regarding Alaska law and chemical abortions.
This bill comes on the heels of a critical study using insurance data that reveals more than 1 in 10 women who take the abortion pill experience serious complications including hemorrhaging, infection, and sepsis—a statistic significantly higher than what the FDA has disclosed to the public.
This study from the Ethics and Public Policy Center analyzed data from over 865,000 prescribed mifepristone abortions, and found that the actual complication rate stands at 10.93%, which is 22 times higher than the “less than 0.5%” figure reported in FDA-approved clinical trials.
How many women from Alaska were told mifepristone abortions were safe but ended up with serious complications? In fact, if we apply the 10.93% complication rate to Alaska’s number of women who had chemical abortions (56% of 1,222), we could estimate that 75 women had some sort of complication. That doesn’t reflect a “safe” abortion method. And in every case, an innocent, unborn Alaskan perished.
CLICK HERE to send a quick email to the Committee asking them to amend SB 147 to clarify that pharmacists should not be able to prescribe and dispense abortion pills.
Clarity on Alaska Law and Mifepristone Alaska Department of Law Press Release – March 17, 2023
Alaska law (AS 18.16.090) defines an abortion to include the use or prescription of a drug to terminate a pregnancy. According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the prescription drug mifepristone, when used together with another medicine called misoprostol, is used to end a pregnancy through ten weeks of gestation.
Alaska law (AS 18.16.010(a)(1)) also provides that only licensed physicians may perform abortions. Under the terms of the superior court’s preliminary injunction in Planned Parenthood v. State, 3AN-19-11710CI, Advanced Practice Clinicians may also perform medication abortions.
AS 18.16.010(a)(1) has always operated to prohibit the sale of mifepristone directly to patients, whether by mail or in person.
The FDA recently indicated it will remove the in-person dispensing requirement for mifepristone. The federal government has also encouraged the U.S. Postal Service to disregard federal law prohibiting using the mail to send abortion drugs. Therefore, Attorney General Treg Taylor joined 19 other state attorneys general in letters sent to certain pharmacies advising them that using the mail to send or receive mifepristone violates state and federal law.
The AG letter has not changed the way abortion drugs are available to Alaskan women. Since 2000, Alaska women who seek an abortion have had to see a physician to receive this abortion drug. Under Alaska law, a woman in Alaska who receives a dose of mifepristone does so in a clinical setting. There are telehealth provisions, but no matter what, the pill is still administered in a clinic, where the prescribing doctor is either present or virtually present through telehealth.
There is ongoing litigation in Anchorage Superior Court concerning who may perform an abortion, Planned Parenthood v. State. Under the terms of the Court’s preliminary injunction (a temporary order until the trial is held) another category of health care providers besides doctors called Advanced Practice Clinicians may perform medication abortions. The patient who receives a dose of mifepristone must do so in a clinic, and the prescribing provider is present either physically or virtually through telehealth. Under Alaska law, patients may not self-administer a medication abortion, and that is why the Attorney General joined the letter asking Walgreen’s not to dispense mifepristone directly to patients through the mail.
While the ongoing Planned Parenthood litigation is challenging the constitutionality of AS 18.16.010(a)(1), neither the preliminary injunction nor the permanent injunction sought by Planned Parenthood would authorize the self-administration of a medication abortion by a patient. So, the direct dispensing of mifepristone to patients in Alaska would still violate Alaska law, even if Planned Parenthood’s current lawsuit is successful.