Supreme Court Maintains Access to Abortion Pill: What It Means for Women’s Reproductive Rights in the US

A reflection of the dissensions between the judges, as certain experts have suggested, tired of waiting for the result of their deliberations? Just hours before the expiration of the deadline she had set for herself to rule on the ban on the abortion pill, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision on Friday, April 21, maintaining the status quo on access to what has for several years been the most widely used method of abortion in the country.

Immediate result of the decision: mifepristone, one of the two agents for the voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) by chemical route, remains over the counter in states where it is legal and can continue to be sent by post , to the relief of Democrats. Chemical abortion is saved – probably for several months – but the Court has not ruled on the merits. The president, Joe Biden, was not mistaken: while welcoming the announcement, he promised to continue to fight against “attacks on women’s health”.

The Supreme Court did not follow Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a conservative appointed by Donald Trump when the latter was in the White House, and installed in a district – that of Amarillo, Texas –, where he is the only federal magistrate , making him a safe choice for conservatives taking legal action.

Seized by the Christian coalition Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the magistrate had ordered on April 7 to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American drug agency, to revoke the marketing authorization for mifepristone. She felt that the fact that it was available by telemedicine and sent by mail was tantamount to circumventing the abortion restrictions adopted in the Republican states since the Supreme Court abolished, on June 24, 2022, the federal protection surrounding abortion since the stop Roe vs Wade from 1973.

“Good news” for family planning

The Minister of Justice, Merrick Garland, had appealed, as well as the New York laboratory Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of this drug approved since 2000 and used since by some 5 million women. States where abortion remains legal were beginning to stockpile mifepristone. As for the pharmaceutical industry, it did not hide its concern at the possible precedent created by a judge known for his activism against abortion. On April 12, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had not ruled on the merits but it had partly supported the position of the Texan judge, ruling that the abortion pill could only be prescribed – by a doctor – in presence of the person concerned, that it should be used before the seventh week of pregnancy and not the tenth, as the FDA had authorized in 2016, and be purchased in pharmacies and not delivered by courier, according to the method that is has been widespread since the Covid-19 pandemic.

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