During the period of a litigation, the Supreme Court is deciding whether women will encounter restrictions when obtaining a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States.
In a fast-moving Texas case, abortion opponents are attempting to reverse the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug mifepristone. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court is anticipated to issue a ruling in the case.
In 2000, the FDA approved the substance for the first time; in recent years, restrictions on its use have been relaxed, including making it available by mail in states that permit it.
The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the drug’s manufacturer, want the nation’s highest court to deny restrictions on mifepristone’s use imposed by lower courts, at least while the legal case is pending. Women who want the drug and providers who dispense it, they claim, will confront pandemonium if drug restrictions are implemented. Depending on the justices’ decision, this could necessitate that women take a higher dose of the drug than the FDA recommends.
Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents anti-abortion physicians and medical organizations in a challenge to the drug, is defending the rulings and urging the Supreme Court to allow the restrictions to go into effect immediately.
Less than a year ago, conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and permitted more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright, prompting the current legal battle over abortion.
