Abortion Restrictions May Be Making It Harder for Patients to Get a Cancer and Arthritis Drug

Soon after she started taking the drug methotrexate in February, Jennifer Crow noticed a significant improvement in her inflammatory arthritis pain. Since then, she’s taken the drug weekly. So her stomach dropped on July 1, when she got an automated call from her pharmacy saying her methotrexate refill for the month hadn’t been approved. Crow, who is 48 and lives in Tennessee, was confused by the disruption, until she saw on social media that other people were reporting similar denials. Methotrexate—which in high doses is used as a chemotherapy drug—is sometimes prescribed to induce abortions, complicating its use in states that have restricted abortion access in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade being overturned. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Crow eventually did get her medication after her doctor re-processed the refill request, but she says temporarily going without it caused her pain and fatigue to flare up—and made her nervous about the future. While neither Crow’s doctor nor her pharmacy explicitly said that methotrexate’s link to abortion affected her prescription, she feels the timing is suspicious. Her home state of Tennessee currently forbids most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy and is set to implement a near-total abortion ban next month. Crow hopes that, moving forward, pharmacies will have clearer policies about how to handle non-abortion-related methotrexate prescriptions. But if not, “weR...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized abortion healthscienceclimate Source Type: news