Supreme Court postpones decision on abortion pill mifepristone for two more days

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday delayed a decision that could prevent patients from getting the key abortion pill, mifepristone, by mail by extending a temporary block in a lower court ruling.

In a brief order issued by Judge Samuel Alito, the court said the stay first announced last week would be extended another two days until just before midnight Friday. The announcement says nothing about how the court will ultimately decide the case, although the delay could indicate division among the nine judges.

The decision means that, for now at least, women can still get mifepristone by mail while the legal battle continues.

The Supreme Court is weighing whether to more permanently block a decision issued by Texas-based US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk that handed a landslide victory to abortion opponents. Both the Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, which makes the brand-name version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, had asked the court to intervene immediately.

Both the Justice Department and Danco said the court should immediately block Kacsmaryk’s April 7 ruling in its entirety while it considers what steps to take.

Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit handed the FDA a partial victory by refusing to suspend the original approval of mifepristone by the Food and Drug Administration in 2000, which would have made it illegal. the distribution of the drug.

But the court allowed separate elements of the Kacsmaryk decision to stand, including the prohibition on obtaining the drug by mail, which is what the Justice Department is challenging in Supreme Court. The lower court’s ruling, if upheld, would also place other restrictions and suspend approval of a generic version of the drug made by GenBioPro.

The abortion drug mifepristone.Phil Walter/Getty Images

To win a more permanent lock on the lower court ruling, the Biden administration would need to win the votes of at least five of the court’s nine justices, which last summer in a 5-4 ruling overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade’s ruling said that women across the country have the right to obtain an abortion.

The new case raises different legal issues related to the FDA’s drug approval process, but will nonetheless test the court’s promise last year to leave abortion policy to the states and the federal government.

A federal judge in Washington state added a new writ that issued a preliminary injunction this month in a different case that barred the FDA from «disrupting the status quo and rights regarding the availability of mifepristone.»

That ruling, also issued on April 7, applies only to the 17 liberal-leaning states and the District of Columbia that filed a lawsuit in February challenging FDA regulations on the drug.

Separately, GenBioPro filed its own lawsuit on Wednesday against the FDA alleging that its due process rights would be violated if there is an abrupt change in the regulatory framework.

Although a different drug, misoprostol, can be used alone for abortions, experts have said that it is not as effective at terminating pregnancies as when given together with mifepristone.

Most abortions in the US are performed with the use of pills, according to a survey by the Guttmacher Institutea research group that supports abortion rights.

As a result of the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse Roe v. Wade, several conservative states have enacted strict abortion restrictions that already make it difficult, if not impossible, for women to terminate a pregnancy, whether by accessing pills or undergoing a surgical procedure. There are 12 states where abortion is effectively banned outright, according to Guttmacher.

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