Oklahoma Judge Refuses to Suspend Law Banning Telemedicine Abortions

An Oklahoma judge will not suspend a state law that bans the use of telemedicine in medical abortions, keeping the 2012 law in place as telehealth advocates sue to overturn it.

Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai last week rejected motions for preliminary injunctions filed by the Center for Reproductive Rights against two separate laws. The center has joined the South Wind Women’s Center in Oklahoma City in suing the state over the two laws, the second of which prevents advanced practice registered nurses from conducting abortions under guidance of a doctor.

Oklahoma is one of roughly 18 states that prevent doctors from using telehealth to prescribe abortion-causing drugs and monitor patients using them. Telehealth advocates say the technology is safe and helps ease access issues in rural states, while opponents question its safety and say doctors should be in the same location as their patients when dealing with abortion-causing medications.

“Abortion advocates used to say that abortion should be between a woman and her doctor, but now they are attempting to take the doctor out of the room and out of the picture altogether,” State Attorney General Mike Hunter told reporters after the judge’s decision last week.

Groups like Planned Parenthood have been fighting to support telemedicine abortions, saying the use of telehealth removes barriers to access for underserved populations. Last August, the organization unveiled the results of a study showing that the service is as safe as an abortion conducted by a doctor in a clinic.

“As access to abortion shrinks across the country, telemedicine is one strategy for expanding patients’ access to safe, legal abortion, including for those living in remote or rural areas,” Dr. Julia Kohn, lead author of the study and the national director of research, evaluation and data analytics for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a press release.

“This study confirms what we know firsthand: Telemedicine can improve health equity by ensuring that more people have access to the care they need - including abortion - in a timely manner by reducing the barriers that make it harder for people to get care, including securing transportation, childcare and time off work,” she added.

With the nation mired in political battles, the telemedicine abortion debate is heating up. Lawmakers in Pennsylvania and Ohio have moved to ban the procedure in their states, and three bills have been filed in Washington DC seeking to pull Congress into the conversation.