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The Abortion Pill Case: What’s Happened, What’s at Stake, What’s Next [1]

['Pam Belluck', 'Abbie Vansickle', 'More About Pam Belluck', 'More About Abbie Vansickle']

Date: 2023-08

Here’s the latest on what is in play.

What’s at stake?

At issue is the availability of mifepristone, the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for medication abortion. More than five million women in the United States have used mifepristone to terminate their pregnancies, and dozens of other countries have approved the drug for use.

Last year, after the Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion in the United States, a consortium of anti-abortion doctors and groups filed suit against the F.D.A. seeking to invalidate its approval of mifepristone and have the pill withdrawn from the market. The plaintiffs claim that mifepristone is unsafe and that the agency’s approval process for the drug was flawed.

The F.D.A. has forcefully countered those claims, contending that the drug is very safe and effective. It has cited a series of studies that show that serious complications are rare. The F.D.A. applies a special regulatory framework to mifepristone, meaning that it has been regulated much more strictly and studied more intensively than most other drugs.

What has happened so far in the case?

In April, Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, a Trump appointee who is a longtime opponent of abortion, issued a preliminary ruling invalidating the F.D.A.’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. Days later, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, struck part of Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling but affirmed major aspects of it, allowing mifepristone to remain on the market but imposing significant restrictions on it.

Soon afterward, the Department of Justice and the company that makes the branded version of mifepristone sought emergency relief from the Supreme Court, which temporarily paused any changes involving mifepristone until another panel of the Fifth Circuit could hear an appeal of Judge Kacsmaryk’s preliminary ruling.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/article/supreme-court-abortion-pill-ruling.html

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