According to the Wall Street Journal, President Trump is hindering access to medical abortion pills, and interest groups are fighting back. Due to COVID and efforts to decrease the amount of less-important visits to doctors, the FDA has loosened restrictions to access different drugs. Some prescription drugs can arrive by mail instead of requiring a physical visit to pharmacies. The article states that "the Trump administration, which opposes abortion rights, didn’t suspend the in-person pickup requirement for the abortion drug mifepristone. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists [(ACOG)], an organization of women’s health care physicians, and other groups sued the FDA over its treatment of mifepristone, also known by the brand name Mifeprex."
According to its website, ACOG is a "professional membership organization" whose "activities include producing practice guidelines for providers and educational materials for patients, providing practice management and career support, facilitating programs and initiatives aimed at improving women’s health, and advocating on behalf of members and patients."
Drawing on Tuesday's definitions of the types of interest groups––economic and non-economic––ACOG seems to be a hybrid of the two types. On one hand, members of the group gain tangible economic benefits (career support) but also engage in non-economic advocacy work (women's rights). One could argue that these doctors benefit economically from abortion accessibility when paid to perform abortions, but ACOG claims to also be an advocacy organization for women's health. In this particular instance with an abortion medication, doctors do not benefit as much as compared to being paid to directly perform an abortion. However, this article makes me wonder––how hard is it for economic interest groups to disguise their self-interested actions behind "public interest" advocacy? It seems pretty easy to have deceptive intentions.
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