How telehealth abortion works

0:00Abortion medication is back in the spotlight. Tomorrow morning, the fifth circuit court of appeals in New Orleans will hear oral arguments in the case, Louisiana versus the Food and Drug Administration. Abortion is illegal in Louisiana, and the lawsuit aims to roll back telehealth access to the abortion medication MIFA-Prishtone, not just for Louisiana, but for the whole country. The popularity of telehealth for abortion has grown dramatically in recent years. To understand why, and pair Selena Simmons stuff and traveled to Arizona where abortion is legal. Dr. William Richardson says his patients in Tucson are pretty flawed that telehealth is now an option for abortion. I think people are shell shocked. What do you mean I can just get on my cell phone and get abortion pills? What? You know, they can't be possible. People just don't get after all of this time that that's possible. We're standing in his clinic, Choices Women's Center, a brown stucco building and a medical center. He explains that telehealth abortion has only recently become legal in Arizona.

1:01After Richardson and the Center for Reproductive Rights sued over state-level restrictions and won. After 25 years of providing abortion in person in the clinic, he began offering telehealth services in May, and it's taken off. I would say 95% of our patients want to use telemedicine in some form. Patients are loving it. We walk over to what he calls the telehealth suite. It has colorful portraits of famous women on the wall like Rosa Parks and Angela Merkel, plus a few comfy chairs. That's really a room, but maybe you could call it a suite. Medication abortion is approved by the FDA for use at 10 weeks of pregnancy or earlier. When patients aren't sure of the date of their last period, they can come to the office for an ultrasound and then sit in here for a telehealth consult with the doctor. To demonstrate Richardson goes down the hall to his office and soon his face appears on an enormous screen in front of me. Okay, so, where, like, imagine this is an appointment.

2:03What do you start with? I would basically say, I went over your medical history and there doesn't appear. Richardson says whether he's seeing a patient in person or virtually, he gives them the same information about the two medications used for abortion, Mifopristone or Mifoprex and Mesoprostol. Mifoprex stops the pregnancy from developing by blocking the action of one of the critical hormones. 24 hours to 48 hours later, we'll have you take your four Mesoproxital tablets all at once by placing two on either side between the cheek and the gum, 30 minutes in and swallow, expect cramping and bleeding within four to six hours of swallowing. If that's too much information or too fast, the instructions are all written out, along with a 24-7 number for the clinic that patients can call if they have questions or concerns. And that pretty much is what the appointment looks like. I would say that most of the time it's less than 30 minutes. Patients in the office can receive the medications right away from a small stock room down the hall.

3:04If they're doing the telehealth appointment on their phone, the medication comes to their house from a male-order pharmacy in a few days. We end the mock telehealth appointment. I'll be right there. Richardson comes back to the telehealth suite. Sometimes I have to catch myself like I can't believe that that was that easy. The problem, as far as anti-abortion rights activists and politicians see it, is that when patients can have a telehealth appointment on their phone and receive abortion medications through the male to their house, state-level abortion bands really can't stop people from ending their pregnancies. That's why anti-abortion rights groups have filed several lawsuits to stop telehealth abortion access nationally. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrell told a Senate committee in January why she thinks the FDA telehealth rules must be changed. Until then, Louisiana's efforts to protect mothers and their unborn children and to hold out of state abortion-pill traffickers accountable for the harm they inflict will be all but futile. For his part, Dr. William Richardson says

4:05that his connection with patients and the information he shares is the same, whether he sees a patient in person or through telehealth. The medications that patients take are the same too. My sense, as well as the sense of every other legitimate medical organizations is that medication abortion has been proven to be safe, effective, and well tolerated by patients worldwide. Richardson knows the risk that telehealth abortion will get restricted again is real. He says at age 66, instead of fretting, he's made contingency plans to be completely remote, completely in person, or anything in between. We are ready to do all of those things if we have to, based on what happens here locally or what happens at the federal level. He says he's ready for anything. Selenas Simmons-Duffin and pure news, Tucson, Arizona.