A major Kansas City health provider is no longer providing emergency contraception and pharmaceutical companies like Amazon and Walmart have limited purchases amid soaring demand in the days after the Supreme Court overturned Wade.
Due to high demand, Plan B purchases have been limited.
According to the Kansas City Star, emergency contraception is no longer available in Missouri because of the state's strict anti- abortion law.
If clinicians violate the ban on abortions, they will be charged with a class B felony and their licenses will be revoked.
The wording of the Missouri law is ambiguous and could be interpreted as criminalizing emergency contraception, according to a Saintluke's spokeswoman.
Gifford, who confirmed the policy change after news began circulating among advocates for sexual assault victims, explained that the system would not put its clinicians at risk of criminal prosecution due to the unclear law.
In Kansas, where the right to abortion is protected under the state's constitution, emergency contraception will still be provided by Saintluke's.
There are restrictions on the purchase of emergency contraception in Missouri as major pharmaceutical companies restrict the purchase of emergency contraception in the wake of the ruling.
The Supreme Court decided that there is no right to abortion and that states can ban it. Concerns over access to contraception were raised by the leaked decision. The court stated in its ruling that the decision only applied to abortion and did not refer to other precedents. In a concurrence to the ruling, Justice Clarence Thomas argued that the court should overturn other court rulings on the rights of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer community.
More states are banning abortions. If the Supreme Court legalized abortion, 13 states had so-called "trigger laws" in place to ban it. Kentucky and Louisiana were set to go into effect immediately after the court ruled. Time delays were baked in or required certain procedural steps from state officials. 26 states will outlaw or severely curtail access to abortion according to the Guttmacher Institute. Some states are challenging the legality of abortion in some states. In August, abortion rights will be on the ballot in Kansas.
What are the anti-abortion laws that cover? Birth control, reproductive healthcare and fertility are all subject to legal questions because of the broad wording of some state abortion bans. Some states have bills that do not acknowledge these issues, and those that do take care to exempt things like birth control or IVF do not necessarily do so in a legal way. In states that want to push beyond banning abortion and codifying the rights of the fetus, these issues are going to intensify. Fetal "personhood" bills could theoretically lead to novel situations, such as a freezer full of embryos in an IVF clinic having the same legal status and protection as a school full of kids.
There are drugs used for abortions that can also be used for other purposes. State abortion bans may make it more difficult to get one. There are already reports of this in Texas, where the state has a ban on abortion after six weeks and on medication abortion. There have been increasing anecdotes shared online, which Forbes has not been able to verify, of patients struggling to access drugs used to treat rhythym as they are also used for abortions.
There is a limit on the number of emergency contraception pills a pharmacy can sell.
Here's how it'll impact reproductive healthcare.
Here's how it could affect fertility treatments.
Here's how it could threaten birth control access.
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