Contraception

Prayers from American “pro-life” activists flooded social media all day. This did not prevent the Supreme Court from deciding, Friday, April 21, to preserve access to mifepristone, a drug used to terminate pregnancies. She did not justify her decision, taken by seven judges against two.

Joe Biden calls to go to the polls

Like many “pro-choice” Democrats, Joe Biden welcomed this highly anticipated judgment, the first major one on the subject of abortion (voluntary termination of pregnancy) since the high court revoked the ‘stop “Roe vs. Wade” in June. Aware that this very intimate subject mobilizes Democrats and independent electorate hostile to the perceived extremism of the conservative right, he promised to continue to “(fight back against attacks on women’s health and called on voters to go to the polls. ” The American people must also continue to use their vote to raise their voices and elect a Congress that will restore Roe’s protections against Wade. », the judgment of 1973 which had made abortion a constitutional right.

Relief for the pro-abortion movement

The decision of the Supreme Court marks a victory and a relief for the pro-abortion movement, very critical of this assembly dominated by conservative magistrates. With the proliferation of family planning clinic closures in the United States in recent years, medical abortion has spread. According to preliminary data from the Guttmacher Institute, which is an authority in this field, it represented 54% of all abortions across the Atlantic in 2022. Five million women have used mifepristone since its marketing authorization by the drug agency FDA (Food and drug administration) in 2000.

The court judgment does not mean that the drug will remain legal. With this decision, it is only going back on the provisional restrictions imposed in mid-April by a New Orleans Court of Appeal (obligation to take the stamp in the presence of a doctor, reduction of the legal time limit to do so , prohibition to send it by post…). This had been seized by the Biden government following the decision, on April 7, of a Texas judge to ban the pill throughout the territory on the grounds that the FDA had not respected the procedure for marketing. the market and that the drug, which must be used with another to terminate a pregnancy, posed a danger to those taking it.

Other decisions expected

The high court does not put an end to this appeal, which therefore continues its course in New Orleans. A hearing is scheduled for May 17. It is not excluded that the procedure ends in disappointment for the pro-abortion camp and that the final decision goes back… to the Supreme Court. Erik Baptist, spokesperson for theAlliance defending freedoma Christian legal group that represents the plaintiffs – an anti-abortion group of doctors – recalled that the fight is not over: “ Our lawsuit to put women’s health before politics continues via fast track in lower courts “, he said in a statement.

It should also be remembered that the use of the abortion pill is prohibited in thirteen American states and is restricted to varying degrees in thirteen others. A consequence of the questioning of the “Roe against Wade” judgment, which paved the way for each territory to set its own policy in terms of abortion. Friday’s decision does not change this reality.