By: Ryan Mills – nationalreview.com – April 21, 2023

The U.S. Supreme Court preserved access to the abortion pill mifepristone on Friday, issuing a full stay in a legal case challenging the government’s approval of the drug more than 20 years ago.

The court’s decision halts, at least for now, a lower-court ruling from earlier this month that would have suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the pills. The court essentially maintained the status quo, not only keeping mifepristone on the market, but allowing recent changes to its access — including allowing the pills to be delivered through the mail — to remain in effect.

The stay is pending a disposition of an appeal at the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. That application for appeal has been fast-tracked, with oral arguments scheduled for next month.

“As is common practice, the Supreme Court has decided to maintain the status quo that existed prior to our lawsuit while our challenge to the FDA’s illegal approval of chemical abortion drugs and its removal of critical safeguards for those drugs moves forward,” said Erik Baptist, a lawyer for Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, which challenged the approval of the drug. “We look forward to a final outcome in this case that will hold the FDA accountable.”

The deadline for the court to make a decision about access to the drug was the end of the day Friday. The court was initially slated to issue a decision on Wednesday, but Justice Samuel Alito extended the deadline, giving justices another two days to review case documents and rulings.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed in November by Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an organization of pro-life medical groups, as well as four pro-life doctors. The lawsuit claims that the FDA never had the authority to approve the two-pill chemical-abortion regimen when it did so nearly a quarter century ago. Lawyers for the government argue the drugs are safe and effective and that the FDA’s 2000 approval process for mifepristone, one of the two drugs, was appropriate.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk disagreed with the government, and on April 7 he issued a ruling suspending the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. The Texas judge, a conservative and an appointee of former president Donald Trump, wrote that the “FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions.”

Less than a week later, on April 12, a three-judge panel with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals voted to restore access to mifepristone, finding that the legal challenge appeared to have been filed after the statute of limitations had expired. But the panel voted 2-1 to put a hold on recent changes the FDA has made that have made the drug easier to obtain, including limiting necessary doctor visits and allowing the pills to be dispensed through the mail.

Lawyers with ADF called the appeal panel’s ruling a win for their cause. But the Biden administration appealed to the Supreme Court “to defend the FDA’s scientific judgment and protect Americans’ access to safe and effective reproductive care,” according to a prepared statement from Attorney General Merrick Garland.

More than half of all abortions in the U.S. are now done using chemical-abortion pills.

ADF has called for the Supreme Court to keep in place the appeals-court ruling “that restored critical safeguards to chemical abortion drugs while the lawsuit proceeds.”

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Source: Supreme Court preserves access to abortion pill mifepristone | National Review