Live updates: Political parties plot next moves on terrain shaken by leaked draft abortion opinion

Residents of Texas and about two dozen other states with sharp limits on abortions have already helped fuel the boom in medication abortions, as patients seek alternatives to surgical abortions at a clinic, advocates say. …

In December, the FDA made permanent a covid-era policy allowing abortion pills to be prescribed via telehealth and distributed by mail-in states that permit it. Even before the FDA action, abortions induced by pills rose to more than 54 percent of all U.S. abortions in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

Still, physicians seeking to prescribe pills in states with limited access are facing a patchwork of restrictions, rules and bans on telehealth prescribing of abortion pills. The legal skirmishing promises to continue.