Demonstrators rally in support of abortion rights on the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, April 15, 2023.
Andrew Caballero-Reynolds | AFP | Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Friday ordered the abortion pill mifepristone to stay broadly available as litigation plays out in a lower court.
The high court’s decision got here in response to an emergency request by the Justice Department to dam lower court rulings that might severely limit access to the medication even in some states where abortion stays legal.
The case will now be heard within the U.S. fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The appeals court has scheduled oral arguments for Wednesday, May 17 at 1 pm CT.
Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, each conservatives, opposed the court’s decision to grant the emergency request from the Biden administration and Danco Laboratories, the distributor of the brand name version of the drug, Mifeprex.
Mifepristone has turn out to be the central flashpoint within the legal battle over abortion because the Supreme Court last summer overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion as a constitutional right nationwide.
Mifepristone, used together with one other drug called misoprostol, is essentially the most common method to terminate a pregnancy within the U.S., accounting for about half of all abortions.
The national legal battle over mifepristone began with a lawsuit filed by a coalition of doctors who oppose abortion, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. Those doctors sought to force the Food and Drug Administration to tug the medication from the U.S. entirely.
Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled in favor of the antiabortion doctors and issued a sweeping order that might have halted sales of mifepristone nationwide.
Days later, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals blocked a part of Kacsmaryk’s order and allowed the brand name version of the drug, Mifeprex, to stay available on the market. However the appeals court judges imposed restrictions on the medication that might severely limit access.
The appeals court blocked mail delivery of the drug, imposed doctors’ visits as a condition to get the medication, and reduced the length of time when women can take the pill to the seventh week of pregnancy.
The appeals court judges also suspended the 2019 approval of the generic version of mifepristone. The corporate that sells the generic version, GenBioPro, told the Supreme Court that nearly all of the nation’s supply of the medication would “disappear overnight” if the appeals court ruling went into effect.
GenBioPro says it supplies two-thirds of the mifepristone utilized in abortions within the U.S.
Danco Laboratories, the distributor of Mifeprex, told the high court that the restrictions would also take the brand name version of the medication off the marketplace for months because the FDA adjusted the drug’s labelling to comply with the lower court orders.