Health Wanted: Pride

The Episode

Pride month might be the perfect excuse to practice a glitter makeup look or dust off your rainbow colored shorts, but it’s also an important time to remember the trailblazers that contributed to health and science before there was a parade to attend. This week on Health Wanted, we’re checking off the next item on the gay agenda: celebrating the resiliency of the queer community.

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The Listener Questions

Are research studies that found microplastics in our bodies actually finding the microplastics in the researchers' blood?

Latex gloves release a byproduct called stearates that are a salt-based, soap like substance that's used in the production of gloves (it keeps the glove from sticking to the hand form).

It’s not plastic, but it looks a lot like microplastics and can make it hard to tell the difference during analysis.

It’s not that microplastics don’t actually exist in the places we’ve found them, but more like, the amount of microplastics you find could be inflated by these other substances people are mistaking for plastics if they’re using these gloves to handle or collect samples.

Unfortunately, this means microplastics are still real, and still a problem in the body, but learning exactly how much of them is in our bodies at any given point could be complicated by the techniques people use to analyze samples.

Is mifepristone still available by mail?

For those of you who are unfamiliar with mifepristone, it is a drug that blocks progesterone, a hormone your body needs for a pregnancy to continue. It is one part of a two-drug regimen that is commonly referred to as “medication abortion.” The other drug used in medication abortions is misoprostol, which causes your body to expel the egg and other tissue. Mifepristone was approved by the FDA 26 years ago and is currently approved for medication abortion through 10 weeks of pregnancy.

When mifepristone was first approved back in 2000, the FDA required that the drug had to be dispensed in person by a certified medical professional. But keep in mind, patients were not required to actually take mifepristone at the time it was dispensed and could take it at home.

After reviewing research that demonstrated the safety of mifepristone, in 2023 the FDA eliminated the in-person dispensing requirement. This meant that mifepristone could now be prescribed via telehealth, and dispensed via retail pharmacies and the mail. 

Mifepristone is safe. Nearly four decades of peer-reviewed research has demonstrated as much. Mifepristone has a complication rate of less than 1%. That’s lower than some common drugs like penicillin and viagra. Mifepristone is one of the most rigorously researched medications, and is a safer option than both procedural abortion and childbirth.

Keep in mind that this is all happening in the backdrop of the 2022 Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, which effectively overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion. As a result, 21 states have either outright banned or significantly restricted abortion access. The FDA’s elimination of the in-person dispensing requirement, which preempts any state laws, meant that tens of thousands of patients in states where abortion is illegal or restricted could still access medication abortion. Even if you do live in a state where abortion is legal, the removal of the in-person dispensing requirement expands access to health services, particularly among those living in rural and medically-underserved areas. 

Given all this, it’s no surprise that medication abortion has become the most common method for abortion, accounting for 63% of all abortions in 2023. But, thanks to a 2025 lawsuit filed by Louisiana against the FDA, that might be changing. 

The lawsuit basically claims that the 2023 elimination of the in-person dispensing requirement violated the Administrative Procedure Act, and harms Louisiana. How? Well, according to Louisiana, without requirements for in-person dispensing it makes it harder for the state to enforce its abortion bans, increases Medicaid expenditures, and harms the public’s health. Louisiana also claims that the Comstock Act (which hasn’t been enforced in decades but also hasn’t been formally repealed) prohibits the mailing of any medication used for abortion.

In order to amend these so-called harms, Louisiana asked the court to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement, effectively banning mail access of mifepristone and therefore making it significantly harder to access abortion care. The courts granted Louisiana’s request to stop dispensing outside of a provider's office, then the manufacturers of mifepristone asked the court to pause the decision while they appealed, then Louisiana claimed that it had suffered the kind of injuries that gave it the legal right to sue, then the court order was put on hold so the mifepristone manufacturer’s request could be considered.

And now the court has decided to uphold mail and pharmacy access to Mifepristone, likely through next year, until the court case can be heard and determined.

When it comes on the docket it could be a doozy. Ruling in favor of Louisiana would undermine the FDA’s position as the national authority on drug approvals in general which could have some serious downstream effects that go beyond just reproductive care access. So that’s just another exciting thing to wait and see about.

Catch all the listener questions and Laurel’s answers on the full episode of Health Wanted by:

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