WASHINGTON – O US Supreme Court On thursday ruled unanimously to preserve access to the abortion pill mifepristone, a pill used in the most common way to end a pregnancy. The medicine was used in almost two-thirds of all abortions in the United States last year.
The ruling is the court’s first abortion ruling since conservative justices overturned Roe v. two years ago.
The judges decided that abortion opponents had no legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug mifepristone and the FDA’s subsequent actions to facilitate access to it.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court that “federal courts are the wrong forum to address plaintiffs’ concerns about the FDA’s actions.” Kavanaugh was part of the majority to overturn Roe.
The case threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
At the moment:
— Read the full Supreme Court decision here
— The US Supreme Court just ruled on Mifepristone. How safe is the abortion pill?
—What is the case? The central dispute was whether the Food and Drug Administration ignored serious safety problems when it made mifepristone easier to get
—Key Takeaways: Several judges pressed for real-life examples and other key moments of discussions in March
– Check the status of abortion rights state by state
Here are the latest:
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday to preserve access to the abortion pill mifepristone, anti-abortion groups denounced the ruling.
“It’s a sad day for everyone who values women’s health and the lives of unborn children, but the fight to end dangerous mail-order abortion drugs is not over,” said Kate Daniel, state policy director at SBA Pro- LifeAmerica.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America: Hawkins called the decision “disappointing but not surprising,” expressing concern about the “conscience rights of pro-life doctors.”
Reproductive rights groups across the country expressed relief at Thursday’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, but nearly all stressed that the ruling marked only a small victory in the long-running battle over abortion access.
“Even with this baseless challenge defeated, we must remain vigilant,” said Destiny Lopez, interim co-CEO of the Guttmacher Institute. “The anti-abortion movement relentlessly pursues its ultimate goal of banning abortion nationwide.”
Jennifer Dalven, director of the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, warned that attacks on medication abortion are still occurring even after the court ruling, saying that “anti-abortion politicians are waiting in the wings to try to continue bringing this case before an extremist judge.” . in Texas in an effort to deny people access to medication abortion care.”
Many others pointed out that it was difficult to celebrate the dismissal of the case when several states enacted its own restrictions on abortion.
“Despite today’s Supreme Court ruling, millions of people will still have restricted access to the health care they deserve,” the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee said in a statement.
When the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in March, the mifepristone safety was at the center of the debate.
There are rare occasions when mifepristone can cause excessive and dangerous bleeding that requires emergency care. Because of this, the Food and Drug Administration placed strict safety limits on who could prescribe and distribute it.
Doctors also had to be able to perform emergency surgery to stop excessive bleeding and an abortion procedure if the medication did not terminate the pregnancy. Over the years, the FDA has reaffirmed the safety of mifepristone and repeatedly eased restrictions, culminating in a 2021 ruling that eliminates any in-person requirements and allows the pill to be mailed.
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, expressed relief over Thursday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision on access to mifepristone, but also expressed frustration that the case made it to court, calling it “without merit”.
“Unfortunately, the attacks on abortion pills won’t stop here – the anti-abortion movement sees how critical abortion pills are in this post-Roe world and is determined to cut off access,” she added.
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of the national abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All, expressed similar sentiments. While expressing relief, she also said, “This baseless effort to block access to abortion should never have been heard from them in the first place.”
The mifepristone case began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade. Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmarykappointed by Trump in Texas, this would have completely revoked the drug’s approval.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone intact, but would reverse changes made by regulators in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
The Supreme Court stayed the appeal court’s modified ruling and agreed to hear the case. However, Justices Samuel Alito – the author of the decision that overturned Roe – and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded.
Health care providers said that if mifepristone was no longer available or too difficult to obtain, they would switch to misoprostol, which is slightly less effective at terminating pregnancy.
US President Joe Biden’s administration and drugmakers have warned that supporting abortion opponents in the case could undermine the FDA’s drug approval process beyond the abortion context, calling on the justices to question the FDA’s scientific judgments. agency. The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which manufacture mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has already approved it.
Abortion opponents argued in court documents that the FDA’s decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on obtaining the medicine were unreasonable and “endangered the health of women across the country.”
More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and prepares the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second medication, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks of gestation.
The Supreme Court Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medicine that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the US last year, in the court’s first ruling on abortion since conservative justices overturned Roe v. two years ago.
The judges decided that abortion opponents had no legal right to sue for the drug’s approval by the federal Food and Drug Administration, mifepristoneand the FDA’s subsequent actions to facilitate access to it.
The case threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
