Washington Post: “The Food and Drug Administration took steps on Tuesday to ease access to medication abortion in states where it is legal, allowing retail pharmacies to dispense the pills, which were previously available only at clinics, directly from doctors or by mail. The regulatory change, which was released with little fanfare or explanation Tuesday night, appeared to reflect the Biden administration’s desire to deliver on its vow to keep abortion accessible after the Supreme Court’s June decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion. The FDA had announced a year ago that it would update protocols for prescribing the abortion pill mifepristone – the first pill used in the two-drug medication abortion regimen. On Tuesday, it completed that update by cementing a pandemic-era change that had expanded telehealth access to the procedure. It also indicated that it would allow certain pharmacies to dispense abortion pills directly, rather than by requiring patients to pick them up from a health care facility, or wait for them to come in the mail from a handful of mail-order pharmacies.”

See also Slip Opinion, Application of the Comstock Act to the Mailing of Prescription Drugs That Can Be Used for Abortions, Memorandum Opinion for the General Counsel United States Postal Service. “Section 1461 of title 18 of the U.S. Code does not prohibit the mailing of certain drugs that can be used to perform abortions where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully. Because there are manifold ways in which recipients in every state may lawfully use such drugs, including to produce an abortion, the mere mailing of such drugs to a particular jurisdiction is an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.” December 23, 2022