The Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to take up the dispute over the abortion pill mifepristone, following the court’s move last term that blocked restrictions on accessing the medication from taking effect. Now, the court that overturned Roe v. Wade last year can more fully resolve the issue.
The restrictions came from Donald Trump-appointed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a longtime anti-abortion activist in Texas who issued an unprecedented ruling in April suspending the pill’s 2000 approval by the Food and Drug Administration. The Supreme Court blocked the ruling from taking effect later that month, pending further review in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In August, the 5th Circuit rejected Kacsmaryk’s ruling on the drug’s approval but upheld some of the restrictions, including mail access to the medication. The 5th Circuit ruling hasn’t taken effect, pending final word from the Supreme Court that the justices can now deliver after they hear argument and issue a decision.
Both the Biden administration and pill maker Danco Laboratories appealed to the high court, and the anti-abortion Alliance Defending Freedom, which brought the case to Kacsmaryk, said in its own appeal that the justices should review the initial 2000 FDA approval itself. In granting review on Wednesday, the justices also declined to take up the ADF appeal.
“Today, more than half of American women who choose to terminate their pregnancies rely on mifepristone to do so,” the federal government said in its Supreme Court petition, arguing that the challengers don’t even have legal standing, because they’re anti-abortion doctors and doctors associations who don’t prescribe mifepristone, so the FDA’s approval of the drug doesn’t affect them.
If the 5th Circuit ruling takes effect, the government told the justices, “it would upend the regulatory regime for mifepristone, with damaging consequences for women seeking lawful abortions and a healthcare system that relies on the availability of the drug under the current conditions of use.”
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