[Niamh.]

Gilead is coming .............

After Roe v Wade, women in anti-abortion states can’t access life-saving medication for everything from chronic pain to lupus to ulcers

Maybe the pharmacist at the Tucson, Arizona, Walgreens was acting out of religious conviction. Maybe they were afraid that they could get arrested. We may never know. What we do know is that on 26 September, two days after Arizona’s abortion ban went into effect, Emma Thompson, a 14-year-old girl with rheumatoid arthritis and osteoporosis, was denied her prescription for methotrexate.

Thompson had been on methotrexate for some time; this was a longstanding prescription that she was getting refilled. The drug, a potent anti-inflammatory drug, is used to treat a wide array of issues, from autoimmune disorders, like Thompson’s, to arthritis and cancer. It’s estimated that 60% of all rheumatoid arthritis patients are prescribed the drug, and for Thompson, it was working well. After a childhood spent in and out of hospitals, enduring years of debilitating pain, her doctors had finally found a medication and a dosage that seemed to be working for her. Her symptoms abated enough that she was able to attend school. “It’s her first year and she’s in high school and it feels like a dream,” said Thompson’s mother, Kaitlin Preble. “She’s not in a wheelchair, she has a social life and friends for the first time, and a life all young people should have.”

But in high doses, methotrexate can also terminate a pregnancy. The drug is not used in most abortions – when methotrexate is used as an abortion drug, it is often administered as an injection to treat an ectopic pregnancy, the kind of nonviable pregnancy that occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside the uterus, which can never result in a baby and frequently has fatal implications for pregnant women. It’s for this reason that several state abortion bans mention methotrexate by name. When the pharmacy wouldn’t fill Thompson’s prescription, this was why: they refused to give the drug to any female patient of “childbearing age”.

Thompson is not alone. Facing politically motivated refusals from rightwing or religious healthcare providers – and caution and confusion from others, who may refuse to prescribe or dispense necessary drugs for fear of being prosecuted or sued under abortion bans – American women living in anti-choice states have suddenly found themselves unable to access a wide array of medications. Drugs which can be used in abortions, or which can possibly cause fetal abnormalities, are used to treat everything from chronic pain to lupus to ulcers to acne. These were medications that these patients were prescribed, and medications that they could get with relative ease before Dobbs. They are medications that they could still get, if they were men.

In response, these women have had to change the course of their medical treatment, or gone through onerous procedures to find new prescribers, pharmacists or medicines. Many women and trans people have long had to take pregnancy tests before they are allowed to access certain medications, proving that there is no fetus to be harmed or risked before they are allowed the medicine that they need to get well. Others are now finding that scared or anti-choice doctors are demanding that they have themselves sterilized before they can continue the treatments that allow them to live normal, productive and relatively pain-free lives.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...DKnw4MV6WtmVzM