The US Supreme Court on Friday preserved women’s access to a drug used in the most common method of abortion, rejecting lower-court restrictions while a lawsuit continues.
The justices granted emergency requests from US President Joe Biden’s administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, maker of the drug mifepristone. They are appealing a lower court ruling that would roll back US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of mifepristone.
The drug has been approved for use in the US since 2000 and more than 5 million people have used it. Mifepristone is used in combination with a second drug, misoprostol, in more than half of all abortions in the US.
Photo: AFP
The court’s action on Friday almost certainly would leave access to mifepristone unchanged at least into next year, as appeals play out, including a potential appeal to the high court.
The next stop for the case is at the New Orleans-based US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has set arguments in the case for May 17.
Two of the nine justices — Samuel Alito, the author of last year’s decision overturning Roe v Wade, and Clarence Thomas — voted to allow restrictions to take effect, and Alito issued a four-page dissent. No other justices commented on the court’s one-paragraph order, and the court did not release a full vote breakdown.
Biden praised the high court for keeping mifepristone available while the court fight continues.
“The stakes could not be higher for women across America. I will continue to fight politically driven attacks on women’s health. But let’s be clear — the American people must continue to use their vote as their voice, and elect a Congress who will pass a law restoring the protections of Roe v Wade,” Biden said in a statement.
Alliance Defending Freedom, representing abortion opponents challenging the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, downplayed the court’s action.
“As is common practice, the Supreme Court has decided to maintain the status quo that existed prior to our lawsuit while our challenge to the FDA’s illegal approval of chemical abortion drugs and its removal of critical safeguards for those drugs moves forward,” alliance lawyer Erik Baptist said in a statement.
The justices weighed arguments that allowing restrictions contained in lower-court rulings to take effect would severely disrupt the availability of mifepristone.
The Supreme Court had initially said it would decide by Wednesday whether the restrictions could take effect while the case continues. A one-sentence order signed by Alito on Wednesday gave the justices two additional days, without explanation.
The challenge to mifepristone is the first abortion controversy to reach the nation’s highest court since its conservative majority overturned Roe v Wade 10 months ago and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
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