healthcare
Supreme Court to Decide Whether Abortion Pill Should Be Banned
Used to produce over half of all abortions
Mar 4 2024UPDATE: March 26: The Court looks likely to find, as we said in this article, that "Anti-abortion groups and doctors not harmed themselves, purporting to represent other unnamed doctors, hardly establishes standing to sue, not least because none of the plaintiff doctors have ever prescribed mifespristone themselves." In other words, that the Court will discard the suit on the grounds that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue seems assured.
But the conservatives on the bench showed unusual interest in the otherwise forgotten Comstock Act of 1873 which prohibits a number of freedoms such as sending though the mails whatever contraceptives and abortifacients existed then. That suggests we will be hearing from the Court in time.
In April a year ago, a federal judge in Texas suspended the Food and Drug Administration's approval of mifepristone, the "abortion pill". The FDA had overlooked "legitimate safety concerns", said the judge, notwithstanding that the pill has been used safely by millions of women in all the years since the agency approved the medication 24 years ago.
Immediately following, in a case brought by attorneys general of 18 Democratic states, who argued that the FDA approval was "lawful and valid" and that the drug is "far safer than continuing a pregnancy", a Washington State federal court agreed and enjoined the FDA from reducing the availability of the drug. A stay has kept the drug available since.
In striking down Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court meant to send all matters of abortion to… Read More »