Boxes of the drug mifepristone line a shelf at the West Alabama Women’s Center in Tuscaloosa, Ala., on Wednesday, March 16, 2022.
Allen G. Breed, File/AP
Rebecca Gomperts, an abortion-rights activist, is aiming to fight back against Roe v. Wade’s reversal.
The doctor is trying to start a clinical trial studying the use of the abortion pill as a contraceptive.
Making the medication available as a contraceptive would also allow women to use it to induce abortion.
A prominent reproductive-rights activist is turning to the abortion pill mifepristone as a possible salve in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who founded “Women on Waves” and several other reproductive rights organizations, has spent the last two decades helping women in abortion-restrictive countries access medical abortion through the use of boats, robots, and drones.
But Gomperts is always interested in the next big thing, she told Insider in an interview this week, and she’s betting that the future of reproductive justice might lie in a 50 milligram dose of mifepristone.
Mifepristone, one of two drugs under the umbrella of the “abortion pill,” stops pregnancy by halting progesterone production. The medicine is taken orally and can be used to induce abortions up until about nine weeks.
Gomperts is already well-versed in the use of mifepristone as an abortion pill. Her organization Aid Access, which she founded in 2018, provides access to medical abortion via mail in the US and worldwide. But Gomperts is looking to utilize the pill’s other health benefits in an attempt to provide people who can become pregnant with a possible fail safe in a post-Roe world and beyond.
“It has amazing health benefits for women,” she said. “It works really well against endometriosis. It works really well against myoma. It’s a very effective morning after pill, and it’s a very effective contraceptive pill once a week that doesn’t have the side effects of hormonal contraceptives.”
Studies around the world are investigating how mifepristone can be used to combat cancer, addiction, depression, and several other ailments, and Gomperts is eager to start a study of her own.
Rebecca Gomperts, founder of the Dutch organization Women on Waves, poses in Amsterdam, on September 23, 2020.
Photo by REMKO DE WAAL/ANP/AFP via Getty Images
She said her goal is to have a 50 milligram dose of mifepristone for use as a weekly, on-demand contraceptive on pharmacy shelves within 10 years.
“And then we hope that it will really change women’s lives,” she added.
If the FDA-approved mifepristone as a weekly contraceptive, people who can become pregnant could then have easy access to the medication as birth control but could also use it as an abortion inducer, should it become necessary.
“The laws are all addressing when people are pregnant,” Gomperts said. “So when you can make sure that people have these medicines in their home, then there’s no criminalization because there’s no pregnancy.”
Gomperts’ solution, however, only works if access to contraception continues to be a protected federal right in the US — a growing concern, given the conservative bent in the nation’s top court. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called on the court in explaining his Friday decision to reexamine Griswold v. Connecticut, the landmark case that protected access to contraception.
But the looming threat of further possible restrictions isn’t stopping Gomperts from pushing ahead.
“I think it’s really important to try to look for what is possible, what is still possible,” she told Insider.
Gomperts said her organization “Women on Web” has the ethical approval of the Ministry of Health of Moldova to run a study because 50 milligrams of mifepristone is already on the market there for treatment of myomas, non-cancerous tumors that can form in or around the uterus.
The group is now in the process of fundraising to implement the clinical trial, which she estimated would take five years, after which she hopes to start applying for the pill’s registration as a contraceptive with the FDA and the European Medicines Agency.
A GoFundMe page for the study says the organization has already raised 500,000 euros and needs to secure another 500,000 euros before they can begin the process. The group ultimately needs 2.2 million euros to conduct the year-long trial, the page says.
“We decided this is a medicine that needs to be liberated from the restrictions that have been put on it,” Gomperts said, “so that it becomes widely available for women to use for all its indications.”