Washington (Associated Press) supreme court On Thursday, by unanimous consent, About two-thirds of all abortions Last year, the first abortion ruling in the United States was handed down since the death of a conservative judge. Roe v. Wade was overturned Two years ago.
Nine judges handed down the ruling. that abortion Opponents had no legal right to sue over the drug’s approval by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Mifepristoneand subsequent FDA action to make mifepristone more accessible. The lawsuit threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, part of the majority that overturned Roe, wrote the court on Thursday that “federal courts are not the appropriate forum to address plaintiffs’ concerns about the FDA’s actions.”
Abortion is banned at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states, and in three others it is banned after six weeks of pregnancy, often before a woman even knows she is pregnant.
President Joe Biden praised the ruling but said Democrats would continue to campaign vigorously on the abortion issue ahead of the November election. “The fact remains that in too many states, women’s right to access necessary care remains at risk, if not impossible,” Biden said in a statement.
And the high court is separately hearing another abortion case. Federal emergency medical law Hospitals can ignore state abortion bans and perform abortions in rare emergency situations where a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk.
More than six million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone, preparing the uterus to respond to the contraction-inducing effects of the second drug, misoprostol. Dual therapy It has been used to terminate pregnancies up to 10 weeks gestation.
Medical professionals say if mifepristone becomes unavailable or difficult to obtain, they will switch to using only misoprostol, which is slightly less effective at ending pregnancies.
The Biden administration and drug companies had warned that siding with abortion opponents in the case could lead the judge to question the FDA’s scientific judgments and undermine the agency’s drug approval process beyond the abortion context. The Democratic administration and Danco Laboratories, the New York company that makes mifepristone, This drug is one of the safest. It’s the newest one the FDA has approved to date.
Danco spokeswoman Abigail Long said in a statement that the decision “protects access to a medicine that has been used safely and effectively for decades.”
The plaintiffs in the Mifepristone lawsuits, anti-abortion doctors and groups, argued in court documents that the FDA’s decisions to relax restrictions on access to the drug in 2016 and 2021 were unreasonable and “put the health of women across the nation at risk.”
Kavanaugh acknowledged his opponents’ “serious legal, moral, philosophical and policy opposition to elective abortion and to the FDA’s deregulation of mifepristone.”
Federal law already protects doctors from being forced to perform abortions or other procedures that go against their consciences, Kavanaugh wrote. “Plaintiffs have not identified any case since 2000, when mifepristone was approved, in which a doctor was required to perform an abortion despite a conscience objection or to provide other abortion-related procedures that went against the doctor’s conscience,” he wrote.
Ultimately, Kavanaugh wrote, anti-abortion doctors have gone to the wrong place and should instead focus their efforts on persuading lawmakers and regulators for reform.
These comments are 2024 Election If Republican Donald Trump wins the White House, his FDA appointee could consider tightening access to mifepristone.
Abortion rights advocates largely breathed a sigh of relief at the ruling, but echoed Biden on the impact of the decision two years ago.
“Ultimately, this ruling is not a victory for abortion, but rather maintains the status quo of a serious public health crisis in which 14 states criminalize abortion,” Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement.
The mifepristone litigation began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, a sweeping ruling that abortion opponents won almost a year ago. U.S. District Judge Matthew KacsmalikThe ruling dismissed an appeal by Senator John F. Kennedy of Texas, a candidate for President Trump, and completely reversed the approval of mifepristone. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the FDA’s original approval of mifepristone. However, the ruling overturns changes made by regulators in 2016 and 2021 that relaxed some of the conditions under which the drug can be administered.
The Supreme Court put the appeals court’s amended decision on hold and then agreed to hear the case, but Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who wrote the decision overturning Roe, would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded, but they joined the Supreme Court’s opinion on Thursday.
The push for restrictions on abortion drugs is unlikely to be halted by the Supreme Court’s decision, said lawyers who represented anti-abortion doctors and groups in the case.
The decision that the doctors have no legal right to sue opens the door to lawsuits from other states, including three others that Kacsmarik had previously allowed to join the suit, said Erin Hawley, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom.
Hawley said he expects Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to continue the lawsuit originally filed in Texas.
Attorneys general for those states did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.
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