After paracetamol, amoxicillin… Is there a risk of running out of abortion pills? While in the United States the battle is raging again around abortion, pharmacies in northern France have found themselves unable to provide one of the components of medical abortion, misoprostol. He “is reported missing in all pharmacies in Lille and in different places in the Paris region”, thus alerted Friday, on Twitter, the pharmaceutical watch association OTmedswhile this drug is involved in 76% of abortions in France, according to DREES.
Many associations and political figures reacted immediately. Several figures from Nupes – including Sandrine Rousseau and François Ruffin -, Family Planning and the Women’s Foundation relayed the alert. The subject is sensitive: in the United States, the other molecule necessary for chemical abortion, mifepristone, is currently the subject of a legal confrontation threatening its prescription.
A threat to the right to abortion?
“This unavailability concretely compromises the right to abortion,” said Clemence Guette, deputy LFI-Nupes Val-de-Marne. “I am going to question François Braun (Editor’s note: the Minister of Health) in writing on this situation and on the measures which are necessary”, also announced Pascale Martin, deputy LFI-Nupes of Dordogne. The next day, the situation in Lille seemed to be restored, according to France 3. “There was a very delicate period. A midwife tried to get some in about twenty pharmacies, for a week without success. It seems that the situation has been restored but the problem is recurrent”, specifies with from L’Express Jérôme Martin, co-founder of OTmeds.
If the shortage was punctual, such alerts have multiplied in recent weeks across the territory, and raise fears of a limitation of access to abortion, because of too long delays in obtaining the molecule. “The situation cannot last any longer! We are sounding the alarm signal and alerting François Braun. Measures must be taken so that access to abortion is not restricted”, also underlined the Family planning April 14, still on Twitter.
Recurring tensions
Misoprostol, necessary for the expulsion of the embryo, has been subject to “supply tensions” since the beginning of 2023, according to a press release from the National Medicines Safety Agency published on March 9. The manufacturer, Nordic Pharma, recognizes for its part “difficulties at the level of the manufacturing sites of the finished products”.
The return to normal is scheduled for the “end of April 2023”. But the sector is deeply vulnerable. “The production of drugs used for medical abortions is in the hands of a single producer, the Nordic Pharma group, with risks of production and supply disruptions and price pressure”, warned already in May 2020 the High Council for Equality (HCE).
The risk that the United States no longer produces
While wholesalers and hospitals can draw on four-month precautionary stocks, the situation remains delicate. “In case of impurity, as is obviously the case at the moment, production slows down or stops, and there are not enough sites to take over. Moreover, this monopoly makes the molecule particularly sensitive to the power of nuisance of anti-abortion pressure groups, which could easily cause blockages”, explains Jérôme Martin, the co-founder of OTmeds.
In June 2022, after the Supreme Court’s decision to no longer guarantee the American right to abortion, the first stage of the current confrontation in the United States, the president of the HCE Sylvie Pierre-Brossolette expressed her concerns about this system. “It’s necessary […] relocate the (American) production of the abortion pill to France,” she said. on Twitter.
Should we fear a ricochet effect, when these drugs are in the sights of anti-abortion activists in the United States, and their access has been temporarily maintained by the temple of American law? Three years ago, the HCE recalled that such a scenario is not improbable: in 1994, threatened by the anti-abortion boycott, the pharmaceutical group Hoechst Roussel then decided to purely and simply abandon the production of Mifepristone. Thus leaving, in the long term, Nordic Pharma alone on the world market.