Is there a risk of a shortage of abortion pills in France?

Since early April, a legal battle to limit access to the abortion pill RU486 (mifepristone) has been raging in the US. On our side of the Atlantic, barely a month after the announcement of the draft to enshrine abortion in the constitution, France is experiencing a shortage of the second pill (misoprostol) needed in the medical abortion process. At least this is the alarm conveyed by the Observatory of the Transparency of Medicines Policy (OTMEDS) on April 14, after several reports from health professionals in the Lille and Paris regions.

In a letter to current Health Minister François Browne, published this Monday, April 17, former Women’s Rights Minister Laurence Rossignol reports the generalized context of drug shortages. He notes: “The deficit is increasing more and more. It affects women’s right to abortion.”

Although 76% of abortions are performed with medication (according to DREES data for 2021) and misoprostol is still licensed, preventing any alternative, associations and politicians are concerned and regret the lack of government response.

And if on Sunday, April 16, the observatory marks the end of the rare situation in Lille, it is not without clarification. Is there a risk of questioning women’s rights or sometimes less like paracetamol and amoxicillin? We take into account.

Live medical device

In early March, the National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Healthcare Products (ANSM) sent a letter to health professionals to inform them of a “supply strain” related to misoprostol and promised that it would be restored by the end of April. This unnamed shortage, unfortunately, is not the first source of concern about this medical device, which has “recurring” problems, according to OTMeds co-founder Jerome Martin, who was interviewed. The Express .

Annoying Monopoly

In May 2020, already after the shortage of contraceptives and abortifacients during the Covid, the Higher Council for Equality between Women and Men (HCE) called on the public authorities to regulate these drugs by ensuring four months’ supply, relocating production. Europe and France and their nationalization.

If those four-month stocks were put into action before then, in June 2022, when the United States Supreme Court declared that it no longer guarantees the right to abortion, the president of the UCA still noted on Twitter: it is necessary to move the production to France.

Indeed, one of the main points of tension is the existing monopoly of misoprostol. Still patented, the drug is produced by only one laboratory, Nordic Pharma, with American capital. Exclusivity that makes production unsustainable. “If there is an industrial concern, pollution at one of the sites, little or no plant can be taken over. Consequently, production slows down for weeks, even months,” Jerome Martin explains in the columns Set free . 2020 In May, the HCG already mentioned these risks in their press release, noting “risks of production and supply disruptions and price pressures”.

The risks of lobbying

The technical dimension is not the only danger of fragility in this monopolistic market. More than any medical device, abortion pills are subject to ideological tension. Also, in a May 2020 press release, the SIS cited the history of Hoechst Laboratories as an example. After buying the Roussel-Ucliffe laboratories in 1997, the pharmaceutical group eventually stopped selling the RU 486 abortion pill and then sold the product for free to another laboratory in 2000 under too much pressure from the Americans. German anti-abortion groups.

There may also be threats to stop production, such as “we will boycott your other drugs if you don’t stop making this pill.”

Jerome Martin

The co-founder of OTMeds shares these concerns, telling Set free that “the concentration of production makes production itself vulnerable.” He is even afraid of the reactions of the American context. “The American capital allocated to the production of the pill may decrease. There may also be threats to stop production, such as “we will boycott your other drugs if you don’t stop making this pill.”

If the inventor of abortion pills wrote in a book in 1990 that this device is a guarantee that “abortion will no longer be a problem”, the reality is different. The freedom to dispose of women’s bodies must still be protected. And for this, industry actors are calling for public production of essential medicines in a theme signed by OTmeds, family planning and We All, among others.

Video shows a June 2022 protest outside the United States Supreme Court promoting abortion rights