Washington.- The Biden government filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court this Friday asking the justices to allow a common abortion pill to remain widely available while the challenge progresses.
The administration’s brief, in the first major abortion case to reach judges since they struck down the constitutional right to abortion in June, asked the court to stay parts of an appeals court ruling that had limited the availability of the pill mifepristone.
“If allowed to take effect, the lower court orders would change the regulatory regime for mifepristone, with sweeping consequences for the pharmaceutical industry, women who need access to the drug, and the FDA’s ability to implement its statutory authority.” says the report.
In a second emergency request, filed by Danco Laboratories, which makes the brand-name version of mifepristone, the company’s lawyers said judges should rely on the FDA’s scientific expertise to determine that the drug is safe and effective.
On Wednesday night, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans issued a mixed decision, staying the most sweeping aspects of a decision by Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk that would have overturned the Food Act and the Drug Administration’s approval of the pill.
But the appeals court, in an unsigned order from a three-judge split panel, temporarily left other aspects of Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling on hold, including requiring face-to-face visits with doctors, reversing the availability of the pills from the first 10 weeks of pregnancy up to seven weeks and unless dispensed by mail.
The panel’s ruling was provisional and the court placed the appeal on relatively fast track, scheduling arguments for May 17.
If Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling had fully taken effect, it would have further severely disrupted the availability of mifepristone, part of the most widely used method of terminating pregnancies in the United States.
The case was brought by several doctors and medical groups, including the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which was incorporated in August in Amarillo, Texas, where the case was filed. Judge Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee and longtime opponent of abortion, is the only federal judge in the Amarillo division of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
