A reprieve. This Friday, April 21, the US Supreme Court decided to maintain access to the abortion pill, threatened by an intense legal battle in the country. American women will be able to continue to receive mifepristone, essential for chemical abortion, by post. The decision interrupts a ban issued two weeks ago by a Texas court.
A relief, while half of abortions in the United States are performed using this molecule. In the United States alone, 5 million women have benefited from it since its authorization in the 2000s, by the Federal Medicines Agency (FDA). These data on the product, and on its reliability, however, did not prevent Matthew Kacsmaryk, Texas anti-abortion judge appointed by Trump, from ensuring that mifepristone was “dangerous to health”.
A decision without any basis, despite the scientific consensus: “The judges would have realized that the abortion pill would actually be dangerous, twenty years after its authorization? It’s ridiculous. All transparency has always been made. As much on the effects , than on the risks associated with chemical abortion. Everything else is political”, explained to L’Express doctor André Ulmann, who participated in developing the abortion pill.
Proof of the ineptitude of such an attempt to prohibit, the Supreme Court, at the origin of this respite given to the abortion pill, had however itself recorded the end of the federal right to abortion this summer. Since then, the different States are free to authorize or prohibit abortion. Only two of the nine judges who make up the Supreme Court opposed the suspension pronounced on Friday.
Good news”
Avoiding open celebration of this temporary victory, Democratic President Joe Biden welcomed the fact that no validation was given to the Texas decision, which “would have undermined the medical judgment of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) and endangered women’s health.
Family planning organization Planned Parenthood said it was “good news”, but “the facts remain the same: access to mifepristone should never have been threatened in the first place”. . The abortion pill is already no longer officially available in some fifteen American states that have recently banned abortion, even if roundabout ways have been developed.
The American legal battle has revived fears in France of a limitation of access to this drug, which is currently difficult to obtain in certain areas due to supply difficulties. This even prompted François Braun, the Minister of Health, to intervene, judging that the situation was going to improve and that there was no risk of a shortage on a national scale.
Chemical abortion depends on two molecules, to be taken as a duo, each manufactured by a single laboratory: Nordic Pharma. According to an opinion from the High Council for Equality (HCE) issued in May 2020, this monopoly increases the “risks of production and supply disruptions and pressure on prices”.
