The United States Supreme Court decided this Friday to guarantee access to a abortion pill widely used in the country by staying a lower court decision that limited its applicationwhile the legal case is resolved in the courts, in a victory for the Government of Joe Biden.
The case, the most important related to abortion since the reversal last year of the ruling that guaranteed access to voluntary interruption of pregnancy throughout the country, originated from a lawsuit filed in courts in the southern state of Texas to reverse the approval of the mifepristone by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The judicial saga began on April 7. A federal judge in Texas, Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered a nationwide ban on mifepristone in response to a lawsuit from a coalition of anti-abortion groups.
On April 12, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially reversed Kacsmaryk’s decision: it said that mifepristone, also known as RU 486, should remain temporarily available pending a final decision, but limited access to first seven weeks of pregnancy, instead of 10, and blocked the possibility of distributing it by mail.
The Justice Department said the initial ruling by Kacsmaryk, a judge appointed by former Republican President Donald Trump, was based on a “deeply flawed assessment of the safety of mifepristone” and also disagreed with the Fifth Circuit’s decision.
The Biden government asked the Supreme Court, where the conservatives have a 6-3 majority, for a “stay” of the Fifth Circuit ruling “to preserve the status quo”, pending an examination of the merits of the case.
In this context, one of the two companies that market mifepristone in the United States, the Danco laboratory, also requested the intervention of the Supreme Court on its side, warning that it risks creating “regulatory chaos across the country.”
The Democratic government and the laboratory argued that the women who want the drug and the providers who dispense it would face chaos if limits on its use were enforced.
The drug first gained FDA approval in 2000 and the terms of its use have been eased in recent years, including availability by mail order in states that allow access. Mifepristone is also used in more than half of the abortions performed each year in the United States.
On April 14, the Supreme Court temporarily upheld access to the pill and was scheduled to issue a ruling on Wednesday, but delayed its decision for two days.
Mifepristone is one component of a two-drug regimen that can be used during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. It has a long safety record and the FDA estimates that 5.6 million Americans have used it to terminate pregnancies since it was approved more than two decades ago, the AFP agency noted.
Since the Supreme Court annulled in June 2022 the historic ruling Roe v. Wade, that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion since 1973, the states were free to legislate on the subject. More than a dozen have passed laws that prohibit or severely restrict abortion.
Polls show that a clear majority of Americans support safe abortion access, despite lobbying by conservative groups to limit the procedure or ban it altogether.
Source: Ambito
