Supreme Court tends to maintain access to abortion pill in United States | Society

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that returned the abortion issue to the high court nearly two years after its justices overturned half a century of federal protections established by a landmark ruling. Roe v. Wade (1973). They were debating whether to ban the use of mifepristone, the most commonly used pill to terminate pregnancy, along with another pill called misoprostol. After 100 minutes of deliberations and questions about both sides’ reasons, the nine justices tended to maintain the current level.

The United States Supreme Court heard oral arguments Tuesday in a case that returned the abortion issue to the high court nearly two years after its justices overturned half a century of federal protections established by a landmark ruling. Roe v. Wade (1973). They were debating whether to ban the use of mifepristone, the most commonly used pill to terminate pregnancies, along with another pill called misoprostol. After 100 minutes of deliberation and questions about the reasons for both sides, the nine justices favored maintaining the current level of drug access in the United States. In June, the sentence will not be known until the end of the judicial course.

Until that date arrives, it is only possible to interpret the magistrate’s stance during the hearing this Tuesday. And from that reading we can conclude that the majority—except perhaps the two furthest to the right among them, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—understand that the plaintiffs constitute an association of anti-abortion Christian doctors. Clearly To launch this judicial crusade, they have not demonstrated that they meet the requirement required by law: that there has been sufficient harm in the matter under discussion to be authorized to sue.

The US Supreme Court is made up of five men and four women. Three justices identify as liberal and six as conservative, three of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump with the express task of changing the rules on abortion in the United States. One of the former president’s appointees, Neil Gorsuch, warned of what he saw as a troubling trend: an increase in cases brought before that court by groups of individuals aspiring to turn their “small demands” into “deep-reaching changes.” “And space.” “universal”. “This case is a perfect example of that,” he thought.

FDA vs Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) It has its origins in a lawsuit filed in November 2022 against the Drug Agency (FDA) in the heat of a controversial Supreme Court ruling that overturned the constitutional right to abortion in June of that year. That ruling returned the power to regulate women’s reproductive freedom to the states. AHM chose to begin its legal battle in Amarillo, Texas, confident that a conservative Christian judge, Matthew Kaczmaric, would take charge of the case there, and that his decision would later be reviewed by the Court of Appeals, the Fifth Circuit. A track record. Tailored to your interests.

The first 15 minutes of the session in the stately Supreme Court building in Washington — at the gates of which pro- and anti-abortion protesters gathered hours before the hearing began — were spent debating whether the “Hippocratic Alliance for Medicine” had legal standing to sue the FDA. has , given that they do not prescribe abortion pills as part of their practice. Attorney representing the agency Elizabeth B. Prelogger also argued that even if they did, they would be unlikely to encounter patients with complications from mifepristone use; In a study provided by the administration, the number of these cases is set at 0.32%. AHM states to the contrary, although without providing evidence, that “thousands of complications” have been recorded.

The plaintiffs’ initial aim was to restrict full access to the abortion pill, which, according to recent data from the Guttmacher Institute, competes with misoprostol in 63% of pregnancy terminations in the United States, a figure that has since increased. Setting aside the sentence set aside Ro. The first drug stops the production of progesterone and interrupts pregnancy; The second causes contractions in the patient and causes the fetus to be expelled. The FDA, which approved its use more than 20 years ago, estimates that more than five million women have used it since then.

Kxmerick agreed with him on everything in Amarillo, but the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi. bought Part of the argument: That blames the 2016 and 2021 decisions, which expanded access to the abortion pill by allowing its prescription and mail-order purchase via telemedicine, for the perceived increase in problems stemming from this more widespread use. Prelogger stated that there is no data to support this cause-effect relationship. For her part, Jessica Ellsworth, a lawyer who represented Danco, the pharmaceutical company that markets mifepristone, before the Supreme Court, recalled that two studies cited by the plaintiffs to make that argument were recently rejected by a scientific journal. published them.

Reduced time frame

If the Supreme Court contradicts the indications issued this Tuesday (which are not conclusive in any case) and agrees with the plaintiffs, mifepristone can continue to be prescribed, but only face-to-face and with a limit of seven weeks, compared to the current 10. , which is the time during which science has proven its effectiveness in interrupting pregnancy. The new deadline would amount to a ban in practice, as many women would not know by then whether they were pregnant or not.

from the end of Roe v. Wade, 21 states have banned or severely restricted the right to abortion amid a chaotic map of legislation and court battles.. In these regions, women have resorted to mifepristone more often than before the ruling, as it spares them long and expensive trips to other states to access surgical abortions at clinics that have often been overwhelmed by growing demand over the past two years. . Studies show that since the Supreme Court ruling, the number of pregnancy terminations in the United States has increased rather than decreased.

Erin Hawley, a lawyer representing AHM and the wife of Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, a leading voice in the party’s most conservative faction, complained that the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which won a major victory from the Supreme Court. In 2022, after four decades of fighting for it, he was at a loss to focus his efforts on “explaining the dangers of abortion drugs.” That argument was also questioned by Clarence Thomas, perhaps the justice most ideologically to the right of the nine.

Another question also arose during the hearing: Will the Supreme Court follow the path of previous rulings with which it has reduced authority to government agencies, as it did with the EPA in 2023, in charge of environmental protection? The idea that their influence has grown too large in the American system is one of the favorite arguments of the hard wing of the Republican Party. Another point of the FDA’s defense is that if the high court agrees with the other side, it will open the floodgates to question any drug decision based on political reasons. After the hearing that took place this Tuesday, it appears that the justices will not use this case to explore that strategy.

This won’t be the only time this year that the high court intervenes on the issue of abortion, one of the issues that has done most to tarnish its image, damaging American public opinion more than ever. They will investigate the case in April Idaho v. United States, In which they will have to decide the legality of a Midwestern state’s anti-abortion law. It is one of the most serious in the country. According to its detractors, it presents doctors and nurses with a difficult problem where the mother’s life is at risk if she is forced to continue the pregnancy. If they terminate the pregnancy, they lose their license or even go to jail, under Idaho law. If not, they would violate another rule, a federal one that requires hospitals that provide emergency services to intervene if a patient’s health is at risk.