The US Postal Service (USPS) can continue to deliver prescription abortion medication despite a June 2022 Supreme Court ruling that overturned a landmark abortion rights decision, the Justice Department said on Tuesday. The department’s Office of Legal Counsel said in an opinion sought by USPS that the mailing of mifepristone and misoprostol, commonly used to terminate pregnancies, did not violate an 1873 law known as the Comstock Act.
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is allowing certified pharmacies to dispense the abortion medication mifepristone to people who have a prescription. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the FDA allowed the pills to be sent through the mail and said it would no longer enforce a rule requiring people to get the first of the two drugs in person at a clinic or hospital.
USPS said in a statement that the opinion “confirms that the Comstock Act does not require the Postal Service to change our current practice, which has been to consider packages containing mifepristone and misoprostol to be mailable under federal law in the same manner as other prescription drugs.”
Mifepristone is a medication used to end a pregnancy. It is taken in combination with another medication, misoprostol, to terminate a pregnancy. Pharmacies that become certified to do so can dispense the drugs to people who have a valid prescription. The FDA has said that the medications can be sent through the mail, as long as they are sent in accordance with the agency’s regulations.
The Justice Department’s opinion on the Comstock Act is a victory for abortion rights advocates, who have long argued that the law does not apply to the mailing of abortion medication. The USPS has said it will continue to follow the FDA’s regulations and allow the mailing of mifepristone and misoprostol.
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