US Supreme Court to decide on access to abortion pill
The US Supreme Court will decide on access to a pill which accounts for nearly half of all abortions in America, in a major case since Roe v Wade.
The US Supreme Court is once again diving into the abortion debate, announcing Wednesday it would take up a case involving access to a drug used to terminate pregnancies.
The justices will consider a challenge by the conservative group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine to the FDA’s expanded approval of mifepristone, part of a two-drug regimen used to induce abortions, the New York Post reports.
The expanded approval, from 2016, permits the drug to be prescribed online and more easily obtained via mail.
Separately, the court rejected a Wednesday challenge to the FDA’s initial approval of the pill from 2000.
Back in April, Texas federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk suspended the initial approval of mifepristone while a lawsuit challenging the safety of the drug proceeded.
That same day, a Washington judge issued a contradictory ruling.
In August, the New Orleans-based Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals shot down parts of Kacsmaryk’s initial injunction but imposed an injunction on the FDA’s 2016 changes that made the drug more easily accessible.
The high court on Wednesday agreed to hear a consolidated version of the case FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and the similar Danco Laboratories v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine case.
Medical abortions account for almost half of termination procedures nationwide, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights advocacy group.
Mifepristone typically helps induce abortion through 10 weeks and was used in 98 per cent of abortions via medication during 2020, according to a 2022 Guttmacher study.
The Supreme Court’s decision will almost certainly have major implications for the FDA’s authority in addition to the availability of mifepristone, which is typically used in conjunction with misoprostol.
The case is the most high-profile abortion-related question to come before the Supreme Court since its June 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the nationwide right to terminate a pregnancy and returned the issue to the states.
“This Administration will continue to stand by FDA’s independent approval and regulation of mifepristone as safe and effective,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
“President Biden and Vice President Harris remain firmly committed to defending women’s ability to access reproductive care.”
Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, requested the high court take up the case back in September.
“The risks and confusion that result from the Fifth Circuit’s decision are not ones that women, teenage girls, and the public health system should be forced to bear without this court’s review,” the company said in a petition at the time.
Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative advocacy group that is representing the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in the case, argued that the Supreme Court didn’t need to weigh in, describing the Fifth Court’s verdict as a “modest decision.”
The Supreme Court is likely to hear arguments in the case early next year before rendering a decision by the end of June.
Mifepristone will remain available nationwide while the case is ongoing.
This article originally appeared in the New York Post and has been reproduced with permission
Push to give every worker 12 extra leave days
All Australian workers could get an extra 12 days of leave a year for severe period pain, hormone therapy and vasectomies, under a new push by a powerful union.
State’s big move on cutting-edge vaccines
One Aussie state has revealed its next move on a major vaccine development project – which promises to change the way it responds to future health challenges.
Grim detail in bombshell defence report
A landmark report into suicides among current and former defence personnel will be handed down today – with the Royal Commission chair calling it a “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to save lives.