Court Dismisses Case against Abortion Pill.
Washington, Jun 13 (EFE).-
The US Supreme Court unanimously dismissed a case seeking a federal ban on a drug used in abortion pills on Thursday, the most significant reproductive rights case since the justices overturned federal protections for the right to abortion two years ago.
The justices ruled that the anti-abortion group of doctors from the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine that filed the lawsuit to ban mifepristone, the drug used in the pills, did not have standing to bring the case.
Prosecutors from President Joe Biden’s administration defended before the High Court that AHM did not demonstrate that they are or will be imminently harmed by the use of the drug.
The Supreme Court dismissed the case on those grounds but did not rule on the merits of the case, which could be refiled in the future.
60% of abortions in the United States are performed with pills containing mifepristone, so its restriction would further limit access to pregnancy interruption in the country.
The lawsuit challenged regulatory changes made by the Food and Drug Administration in 2016 and 2021 that allowed the drug to be available by mail and to be prescribed by a healthcare provider that only sees the patient virtually and not in person, which is known as a teleabortion.
This process eases the access to medication abortions, in which patients with pregnancies of under 10 weeks can take a combination of mifepristone pills and another drug called misoprostol without having to go to a clinic.
Mifepristone blocks progesterone, a hormone necessary for the pregnancy to continue, while misoprostol causes uterine contractions, causing the body to expel the fetus.
Numerous studies indicate that the combination of these pills results in a complete abortion in over 99% of patients.
FDA data analyzed by CNN showed mifepristone to be safer than some common, low-risk prescription drugs, with only five deaths per million users compared to 49 for Viagra users, for example.
Medication abortion is also safer than both surgical abortion or childbirth.
The case was filed in a Texas court in 2022, and Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, appointed by former President Donald Trump and openly against abortion, issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the medication’s approval, removing the pill from the market.
In August 2023, an appeals court determined that mifepristone should remain legal but imposed considerable restrictions on its access, bringing the case to the Supreme Court.
It has been almost two years since the Supreme Court eliminated the “Roe vs. Wade” doctrine that had protected abortion at the national level for decades. Since then, nearly half of the states in the country have restricted or banned abortion, making teleabortion the solution for millions of women.
US President Joe Biden warned Thursday that the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold access to the abortion pill by dismissing the case against it does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive rights must continue, which he says are under threat from Republicans.
“Attacks on medication abortion are part of Republican elected officials’ extreme and dangerous agenda to ban abortion nationwide. Since the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, Republican elected officials have imposed extreme abortion bans in 21 states, some of which include zero exceptions for rape or incest,” Biden said.EFE
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