The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously protected access to an abortion pill that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States last year, in the court’s first abortion-related decision since the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago.
The justices ruled that abortion opponents lacked the right to sue the Food and Drug Administration for approving the pill, mifepristoneand for having taken measures to facilitate access.
Judge Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court that “federal courts are the wrong forum to address plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA actions.” Kavanaugh was part of the majority to overturn Roe.
The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone nationwide, even in states where abortion remains legal.
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said relief by the US Supreme Court’s Thursday decision on access to mifepristone, but also expressed frustration because the case went to court, calling it “baseless.”
“Unfortunately, the attacks on abortion pills will not stop here: the anti-abortion movement sees how critical abortion pills are in this post-Roe world and are hell-bent on cutting off access”he added.
Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of the national abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All, echoed similar sentiments. While he expressed relief, he also said, “They should have never listened to this baseless pressure to block abortion access in the first place.”
The case of mifepristone It began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump nominee in Texas, that would have overturned the drug’s approval entirely.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit left the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone intact, but would reverse changes made by regulators in 2016 and 2021 that alleviated some conditions for the administration of the drug.
The Supreme Court stayed the appeals 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 as the case proceeded.
More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone It blocks the hormone progesterone and prepares the uterus to respond to the contraction-provoking effect of a second drug, misoprostol.. The two-drug regimen has been used to terminate a pregnancy up to 10 weeks of gestation.
News in development…
(with information from AP)
