US Supreme Court upheld women’s access to pill used in the most frequent method of abortion on Friday. Dismissing lower-court limits while a lawsuit is pending. The judges granted emergency requests from the Biden administration and Danco Laboratories, a New York-based manufacturer of the medication mifepristone.
The Supreme Court’s decision to stay the lower court’s decision “is a signal that they understand the implications of this decision and its impact not only for reproductive health but for the pharmaceutical industry as a whole,” says Ameet Sarpatwari, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the assistant director of the Programme on Regulation, Therapeutics, and Law at Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. However, the pill’s eventual fate and widespread availability remain in doubt. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, Jr. both dissent from Friday’s decision.
In early April, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of Amarillo, Texas, ruled in favour of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of anti-abortion organisations and doctors calling for the removal of mifepristone’s FDA clearance two decades ago. The ruling was swiftly appealed by the Department of Justice and the drug’s maker, Danco Laboratories. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals imposed a stay of the Texas ruling last week. This kept mifepristone on the market, but the court limited its distribution by mail—effectively rolling back a 2016 FDA rule. Earlier this week, the Supreme Court granted a halt on the appeals court’s verdict, which it then prolonged until Friday evening.
On the same day as the Texas verdict, a district judge in Washington State ruled that the FDA should keep abortion pill access in 17 US states and Washington, D.C.
