Anti-abortion coalition asks Supreme Court to restrict mifepristone
An anti-abortion coalition urged the Supreme Court to leave in place a lower court decision that would prevent patients from obtaining mifepristone by mail amid other new restrictions.
WASHINGTON — An anti-abortion coalition urged the Supreme Court on Tuesday to leave in place a lower court decision that would prevent patients from obtaining the abortion pill mifepristone by mail amid other new restrictions.
The groups, led by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, said in a filing that the court should leave in place a ruling last week by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would suspend several regulatory decisions by the Food and Drug Administration since 2016 that made it easier to obtain the drug.
Lawyers for the groups wrote that the FDA over decades has "stripped away every meaningful and necessary safeguard on chemical abortion, demonstrating callous disregard for women’s well-being, unborn life, and statutory limits."
“The lower courts’ meticulous decisions do not second-guess the agency’s scientific determinations; they merely require the agency to follow the law,” the lawyers added.
They also dismissed the government's "sky-is-falling argument" about the implications of allowing the lower court ruling to go into effect. While the FDA has warned of regulatory chaos, the anti-abortion coalition's lawyers say older regulations dating to 2011 could immediately go into effect if the Supreme Court rejects the government's request.
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