The IndyStar recently shared the story of an Indiana woman who was allegedly denied access to a drug to help complete her missed miscarriage. That drug — mifepristone — blocks the pregnancy hormone progesterone and is used as part of the two-drug abortion pill regimen along with misoprostol, a drug which causes contractions. Indiana law protects most preborn children from abortion; therefore, the abortion pill drugs can’t be used in the state to intentionally kill a preborn baby, but can be used for miscarriage care.
Indiana state law defines abortion as “the termination of human pregnancy with an intention other than to produce a live birth or to remove a dead fetus (emphasis added).” This would allow doctors to prescribe miscarriage treatment to women — which is exactly what happened in this case.
Here are some reasons why we know that the media is misleading the public in this case:
1. She was referred to another provider in the same state for the drug.
The unnamed woman had gone to her ultrasound appointment in October 2023 at nine weeks. While there, she learned her baby had died, but her body had not yet begun the miscarriage process (“missed miscarriage”). A doctor at IU Health Ball Memorial Hospital prescribed her misoprostol to cause contractions in hopes of prompting the miscarriage to complete. However, after taking two doses, she still had not passed the remains of her baby.
She then allegedly decided to research treatment for missed miscarriage and learned that some research indicates that taking mifepristone in addition to misoprostol for miscarriage may increase her chances of clearing her uterus.
IndyStar reported that she “asked her doctor about the two-dose regimen,” but “a nurse in the office told her that the doctor can’t prescribe that medication [mifepristone]. She was told to go to a provider in Indianapolis [same state] for the medication or to wait several weeks for surgical removal of the tissue” (emphasis added).
The woman said she thought to herself at that moment, “You want me to carry this dead tissue for two and a half weeks?”
IndyStar asked the hospital for comment, and a spokesperson explained, “[O]ur physicians may prescribe FDA approved medications as permissible by law.”
2. What prevented that particular doctor/hospital from prescribing the drug?
The news outlet and the woman appear to blame the state’s pro-life law protecting preborn children from abortion for the doctor’s inability to prescribe mifepristone — but since the nurse referred her to another doctor within the same state, this is not likely, and they are missing a key detail. The hospital may have been referring, not to state law, but to federal regulations put in place by the FDA.
Though under the Biden administration, the FDA lifted safety rules that had been enforced on mifepristone for decades — including removing an in-person dispensing requirement — mifepristone must be dispensed by a certified prescriber (that is, a prescriber certified by abortion pill manufacturer Danco), or by a certified pharmacy allowed to fill prescriptions issued by certified prescribers. The FDA states:
Under the Mifepristone REMS Program, mifepristone must be dispensed by or under the supervision of a certified prescriber or by certified pharmacies for prescriptions issued by certified prescribers. Under the Mifepristone REMS Program, mifepristone may be dispensed in-person or by mail.
The nurse didn’t tell the woman she couldn’t access mifepristone in the state of Indiana — in fact, she told her where she could go to get the drug in the same state. She told her that her doctor couldn’t prescribe it — and if that doctor or hospital were not certified prescribers of mifepristone, they couldn’t. So it appears they sent her to a certified prescriber who could dispense it.
While Indiana does have requirements regarding how mifepristone can be dispensed, those rules would not have affected this woman’s situation. The hospital seemingly confirmed this in its statement when it said its doctors can prescribe medications as “permissible by law.” In this case, it seems likely they were referring to the FDA’s own regulations on the drug.
