2023-04-22 04:10:42
A reflection of the dissensions between the judges, as certain experts have suggested, tired of waiting for the result of their deliberations? Just hours before the expiration of the deadline it had set itself to rule on the ban on the abortion pill, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision on Friday, April 21, maintaining the status quo. on access to what has for several years been the most widely used method of abortion in the country.
Immediate result of the decision: mifepristone, one of the two agents for the voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) by chemical means, remains over the counter in states where it is legal and can continue to be sent by post, to the relief of the Democrats. Chemical abortion is saved – probably for several months – but the Court has not ruled on the merits. President Joe Biden got it right; while welcoming the announcement, he promised to continue to fight against “attacks on women’s health”.
The Supreme Court did not follow Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a conservative appointed by Donald Trump, when the latter was in the White House, and installed in a district – that of Amarillo, Texas –, where he is the only magistrate federal government, making him a safe choice for conservatives taking legal action.
Seized by the Christian coalition Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the magistrate had ordered on April 7 to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the American drug agency, to revoke the marketing authorization for the pill mifepristone. She believed that the fact that the pill is available by telemedicine and sent by mail amounted to circumventing the restrictions on abortion adopted in the Republican states since the Supreme Court removed, on June 24, 2022, the federal protection whose IVG had been surrounded since the Roe vs Wade judgment of 1973.
“Good news” for Family Planning
The Minister of Justice Merrick Garland had appealed, as well as the New York laboratory Danco Laboratories, the manufacturer of this drug approved since 2000 and used since by some 5 million women. States where abortion remains legal were beginning to stockpile mifepristone. As for the pharmaceutical industry, it did not hide its concern at the possible precedent created by a judge known for his activism against abortion. On April 12, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had not ruled on the merits but had partly supported the position of the Texan judge, ruling that the abortion pill could only be prescribed in person by a doctor, was to be used before the seventh week of pregnancy and not the tenth, as the FDA had authorized in 2016, and to be purchased in pharmacies and not delivered by mail, according to the method which has become widespread since the pandemic.
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