SCOTUS Upholds Access To Abortion Pill

Facts

• The US Supreme Court on Friday ruled that mifepristone, a widely used abortion pill, would remain on the market while a lawsuit in a lower court plays out.¹
• The decision to uphold national access to mifepristone means the drug will be widely available — at least in states where abortion is legal and the medication was previously available — for up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy.²
• The announcement comes after a federal judge in Texas on April 7 imposed a nationwide ban on mifepristone, invalidating the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of mifepristone 23 years ago.³
• The top court had on Wednesday allowed the abortion pill to remain available through Friday until the justices weighed whether to block or allow the lower-court ruling.⁴
• The FDA claims the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals' decision to prohibit mifepristone's use beyond seven weeks of pregnancy, along with a ban on its distribution by mail, would "scramble" the regulatory regime governing the pill.⁵
• The use of mifepristone — approved by the FDA in 2000 — has been deregulated in recent years. Under Pres. Biden, it has become widely available at retail pharmacies and can now be delivered by mail.⁶
• About half of the women in the US use mifepristone together with misoprostol to terminate pregnancies.⁷

Sources: ¹New York Times, ²NPR Online News, ³VOA, ⁴Wall Street Journal, ⁵Daily Caller, ⁶FOX News, and ⁷CNBC.

Narratives

• Left narrative, as provided by MSNBC. Access to mifepristone should never have been in jeopardy in the first place. Unfortunately, lower court judges engaged in outrageous judicial activism, including second-guessing scientific judgments, to limit access to abortion pills used by over 5M women in the US since the FDA's decades-old approval. This case is completely absurd as it rests on the evidence given by anti-abortion doctors, who should have been found to lack standing as they would have been if the case had involved any other drug.
• Right narrative, as provided by National Review. Self-managed abortions constitute murder under strict abortion bans. While it has been on the market for nearly a quarter century, the progesterone blocker mifepristone kills unborn babies by depriving them of nutrients and can have severe repercussions for the mother's health. It is unacceptable that, instead of increasing oversight of the drug, the FDA approved it in violation of its statutory duty, eliminating safeguards and even making it more accessible.

Predictions