Marty Schladen

El Paso Times

AUSTIN — Texas health providers on Wednesday welcomed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s relaxed regulations regarding the use of a drug that induces abortions.

They said the new regulations will reduce what they consider to be unreasonable state burdens on access to drug-induced abortions, known as “medication abortions.”

“They’re finally catching up with reality,” said Dr. Franz Theard, a physician who operates Hilltop Women’s Reproductive Clinic in El Paso.

Theard says he agrees with the new FDA recommendation. The FDA had changed the label on the abortion drug mifiprex, also known as mifepristone. The agency increased the window during which a woman can take the drug from 49 to 70 days since she began her last period, the New York Times reported. The new label also reduces the required dosage of the drug from 600 milligrams to 200.

The old regulations were based on clinical trials that go back to the 1990s and doctors in many states don’t follow them in a practice that is known as “off-label” use. In Texas and some other states the law prohibits such off-label uses.

“The benefit of this announcement will be most immediately felt by women and providers in Ohio, Texas and North Dakota — states where laws are in effect requiring that medication abortion be provided according to the regimen outlined on mifepristone’s label,” Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions and other reproductive care, said in a statement.

Theard said he he didn’t agree with lowering the dosage of mifiprex, but he said women will benefit greatly from the expanded time they have to get medication abortions.

Under Texas law, pregnant women seeking abortions must first fill out paperwork, get an ultrasound and receive counseling. Then they must return 72 hours later to take mifiprex. Then they are sent home where they take a second drug, misoprostol.

“We tell them, ‘Don’t go to work,’” Theard said, explaining that the procedure causes cramping.

Women are supposed to return for a follow-up visit, but about 30 percent don’t, Theard said.

Despite the discomfort it causes, a mifiprex abortion is an easier procedure than the alternative, a surgical abortion, Theard said.

“It’s much, much less invasive,” he said.

Abortion-rights advocates say that medication abortions are far more common than surgical abortions and Planned Parenthood said mifiprex is popular among women who receive medication abortions.

“One study found that 97 percent of women would recommend the method to a friend,” the group said. “Additionally, 91 percent of the women reported that they would choose the (mifiprex) regimen again if they had to have another abortion.”

Planned Parenthood said that mifiprex is 99 percent safe, but an anti-abortion group said the method is hazardous.

Randall O'Bannon, director of research for National Right to Life, said medication-induced abortions still are dangerous and have led to at least 14 deaths and thousands of injuries. He says the new protocols serve mostly the interests of the abortion industry by increasing their profit margin by requiring a smaller dose of the drug and reducing the level of staff they have to devote to the patient.

Wednesday’s change in FDA regulations might have been welcome news at Hilltop, but the clinic faces other challenges.

Gloria Martinez, the nursing administrator, said it is waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of House Bill 2, a Texas law that would require it to upgrade to ambulatory surgical-center standards.

In the wake of the law’s passage in 2013, the number of clinics in Texas has dropped from 41 to 18 and is expected to drop further - to 10 or fewer - if the Supreme Court rules that HB 2 does not place an undue burden on a woman’s right to an abortion.

Martinez said Hilltop will be one of the clinics that is forced to close if the high court upholds the law.

She said the clinic sees patients from as far away as Amarillo, which is more than 400 miles from El Paso.

Marty Schladen can be reached at 512-479-6606;mschladen@gannett.com; @martyschladen on Twitter.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.