The United States Supreme Court has agreed to take up a case that could determine the availability of medications used for abortions.
The Biden administration and pharmaceutical manufacturer Danco Laboratories appealed to the nation’s highest court to intervene after a lower court ruled in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the Fifth Circuit court’s decision “threatens to undermine the FDA’s scientific, independent judgment and would reimpose outdated restrictions on access to safe and effective medication abortion.”
“Across the country, we’ve seen unprecedented attacks on women’s freedom to make their own health decisions,” said Jean-Pierre in a statement on Dec. 13. “States have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans that put the health of women in jeopardy and that threaten to criminalize doctors for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide.”
“This Administration will continue to stand by FDA’s independent approval and regulation of mifepristone as safe and effective,” she added.
Danco makes mifepristone, commonly known as the abortion pill. Chemical abortions account for more than half the abortions in the United States.
While the drug was approved by the FDA in 2000, the agency repeatedly removed barriers to access beginning in 2016 which critics say put women at increased risk. By 2021, the abortion pill was approved for delivery via mail.
“Every court so far has agreed that the FDA acted unlawfully in removing common-sense safeguards for women and authorizing dangerous mail-order abortions,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erin Hawley in a statement. “We urge the Supreme Court to do the same.”
“The FDA has harmed the health of women and undermined the rule of law by illegally removing every meaningful safeguard from the chemical abortion drug regimen,” Hawley continued. “Like any federal agency, the FDA must rationally explain its decisions. Yet its removal of common-sense safeguards—like a doctor’s visit before women are prescribed chemical abortion drugs—does not reflect scientific judgment but rather a politically driven decision to push a dangerous drug regimen.”
The Alliance Defending Freedom represents the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a group of doctors and medical professionals. The group filed its suit in November of 2022.
The Supreme Court will review a number of decisions made by the FDA since 2016 including extending “the window in which mifepristone could be used to terminate pregnancies from seven weeks’ gestation to 10 weeks,” reducing “the number of in-person visits for patients from three to one,” and altering the mifepristone dosing regiment, reports NBC News.
A Texas court issued a temporary injunction in April after finding the plaintiffs were likely to prevail. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk blocked the FDA’s 2000 approval of the drug and any decision made since the approval that allowed it to be more easily distributed.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August that the FDA did not sufficiently weigh the health risks associated with the drug when revising its standards to make mifepristone more widely available. The Supreme Court had already issued a stay while the case was heard in court which allowed the drug to remain available for distribution.
The Supreme Court could hear arguments in the matter in the spring of 2024.
