US Supreme Court to decide access to abortion pill
STORY: The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to hear a bid by President Joe Biden’s administration to preserve broad access to a major abortion pill.
The justices took up the administration's appeal of an August decision by the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would curb how the pill, called mifepristone, is delivered and distributed.
They are expected to hear arguments in the coming months and issue a decision by the end of June, which sets up another major ruling on reproductive rights to land in the middle of a heated presidential race.
Elaine Kamarck is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution:
“I think the political implications are mammoth. And I think that all through this, ever since they decided against Roe v Wade, people have underestimated just how important this is to most Americans, especially to American women.”
Mifepristone is taken with another drug called misoprostol to perform medication abortion, and was approved as safe and effective by the FDA in 2000.
It accounts for more than half of all U.S. abortions and has been used by millions of American women.
Harvard law professor Glenn Cohen explains what’s at stake in the decision:
“So these are the main things that are on the table. Up to what week can you use this drug? Does a physician have to be the one to administer it? How many visits and whether those visits have to be in person?"
"I think it's just really important to kind of focus on how exceptional what's going on in this case is and what how motivated it is by antipathy towards abortion and abortion access in this country.”
The 5th Circuit’s decision rolled back FDA actions that had made the drug easier to access in recent years, including a 2021 action under Biden allowing the pill to be prescribed remotely and sent by mail, instead of requiring an in-person doctor visit.
And, a 2016 action under Democratic former President Barack Obama allowed mifepristone to be used at up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, up from seven.
“Now, the U.S. Supreme Court will review only the question about whether that latter piece - changing the access regime to the pre-2016 status - was appropriate or not. And that's the question the Supreme Court has agreed to hear.”
"So what that means is that the Supreme Court is not interested in completely making mifepristone unavailable, that is, completely undoing the FDA approval.”
Abortion rights are a divisive issue in the 2024 presidential race, as Joe Biden, a Democrat who champions abortion rights, campaigns for re-election.
Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican nomination to challenge Biden, appointed three members of the Supreme Court's 6-3 conservative majority – all three of whom voted to overturn Roe in 2022.
Since last year's Supreme Court decision, at least 14 U.S. states have put in place outright abortion bans while many others prohibit abortion after a certain duration of pregnancy.
