Diverse Stakeholders Implore Supreme Court to Preserve Abortion Pill Access

If the justices take up the case, they could hear oral arguments early next year and issue a decision by late June 2024, influencing fall elections.

10/19/2023
by CARRIE N. BAKER

On Thursday, Oct. 12, a wide range of organizations filed 14 amicus curiae briefs supporting a Justice Department petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a Fifth Circuit decision imposing nationwide limits on access to the abortion pill mifepristone. Supporting the government’s appeal were reproductive rights organizations, medical and legal experts, patient advocacy groups, 257 members of Congress, 23 states and D.C., over 600 state legislators, state and local governments and officials, and pharmaceutical industry representatives, including GenBioPro, which makes a generic form of mifepristone.

“This legal attack on medical abortion has no basis in law or fact,” said GenBioPro CEO Evan Masingill. “Decades of science support mifepristone’s safety and efficacy. GenBioPro firmly believes that all people, regardless of income, gender, race or geography, have a right to access evidence-based healthcare and safe and effective medicines, and that includes medical abortion.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/10/19/supreme-court-abortion-pill-mifepristone/

USA – Pharmacies begin dispensing abortion pills

A handful of pharmacies are offering the pills 10 months after the Biden administration allowed them to do so.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and LAUREN GARDNER
Oct 6, 2023

A handful of independent pharmacies across the country have quietly begun dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone under new rules created by the Biden administration earlier this year, even as a looming Supreme Court case could reimpose restrictions or ban the drugs entirely.

Thousands of branches of major pharmacy chains are poised to join them — making the drugs more accessible to millions of people nationwide and kicking off a new phase of the legal and political battle over the most popular method of ending a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/06/pharmacies-begin-dispensing-abortion-pills-00120397

West Virginia – Judge rejects argument by abortion pill maker that state ban violates Constitution

GenBioPro claimed West Virginia's ban on mifepristone was at odds with the FDA.

By Anne Flaherty
August 24, 2023

West Virginia has the right to block the sale of the abortion drug mifepristone, even though federal regulators have decided the medication is safe, a federal judge ruled on Thursday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers is a blow to abortion rights groups that had hoped to strike down state bans using a novel and somewhat arcane legal argument invoking an idea known as "federal preemption."

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Health/judge-rejects-argument-abortion-pill-maker-state-ban/story?id=102545092

24.08.2023

News

Evan Masingill

Food and Drug Administration

Appeals court says abortion pill mifepristone should remain on the market but rules in favor of limiting access

By Tierney Sneed
Wed August 16, 2023

A federal appeals court on Wednesday wiped away a lower court’s ruling that would’ve taken the medication abortion drug mifepristone off the market, but upheld aspects of the ruling that could cut back access to the pills.

The ruling from a conservative three-judge panel of the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals will not affect the current availability of mifepristone, as the Supreme Court has already said that the drug and regulations that make it accessible will remain in place for the time being.

Continued :https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/16/politics/abortion-pill-mifepristone-5th-circuit/index.html

Abortion pill maker sues FDA to preserve access

The lawsuit from GenBioPro, which makes the generic version of the drug, comes as SCOTUS action looms.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN
04/19/2023

The company that makes the generic version of a common abortion pill sued the FDA on Wednesday, hoping to bar the agency from rolling back access to the drug if the Supreme Court allows sweeping restrictions to take effect this week.

The challenge filed in federal court in Maryland, where the agency is headquartered, argues that if the FDA implements a court order suspending approval of the drug, mifepristone, it would be “depriving GenBioPro of its constitutional and statutory rights to market mifepristone without affording GenBioPro due process of law.”

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/19/abortion-pill-maker-sues-fda-to-preserve-access-00092810

19.04.2023

News

abortion pills

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

FDA

Food and Drug Administration

US Supreme Court upholds temporary access to abortion pill

Lower courts had issued restrictions on access to the abortion pill, used in about half of all US abortions.

19 Apr 2023

The United States Supreme Court has extended a temporary ruling that allows access to the abortion pill mifepristone, as anti-abortion rights groups seek to roll back approval for the medication, which is used in about half of all of the country’s abortions.

Wednesday’s decision by US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito puts the issue on hold for two additional days, until Friday at 11:59pm US Eastern time (03:59 GMT Saturday).

Continued: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/19/us-supreme-court-upholds-temporary-restrictions-on-abortion-pill

19.04.2023

Billboards advise on how to get abortion pills in US states where procedure is banned

Mobile billboards on how to get access to pills by mail are being driven through college campuses in 14 states

Ed Pilkington in New York
Fri 3 Mar 2023

Women living under abortion bans in the US are being offered advice on how to get access to abortion pills by mail, through a system of mobile billboards which are being driven through college campuses in 14 states carrying the prohibition.

The billboards are the creation of Mayday.Health, a non-profit set up in the wake of the US supreme court’s ruling last June that overturned the constitutional right to an abortion. The posters carry QR codes that link to online information providing a step-by-step guide on how to obtain the abortion pill even in states which have banned it.

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/03/abortion-pill-billboards-us-states-bans

03.03.2023

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abortion pills

Food and Drug Administration

pro-choice billboards

self-managed abortion

Actually, One Texas Judge Is Not the Final Decision-Maker on Medication Abortion

One district judge’s ruling does not have to affect the entire country.

BY DAVID S. COHEN, GREER DONLEY, AND RACHEL REBOUCHE
FEB 28, 2023

All eyes in the fight over reproductive rights and justice have been focused on a federal judge in Amarillo, Texas. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will soon decide a case involving the first drug in a medication abortion, mifepristone. Though the case makes wholly unpersuasive arguments, undermined by the facts and the evidence, plaintiffs filed in this specific court because Kacsmaryk is one of the most conservative judges on the federal bench and has an explicit and documented animus toward abortion. The expectation is that he will do everything in his power to end medication abortion as we know it. Because states like Texas have already banned abortion (including medication abortion), the deep fear is that his ruling could affect abortion care even in states where it remains legal.

But we would like to offer some clarification here. Because despite the barrage of predictions that this case could ban mifepristone and take it off the market, there are several basic legal principles suggesting that Judge Kacsmaryk’s power is limited and that a ruling for the plaintiffs will not necessarily change much at all with medication abortion.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/02/texas-judge-abortion-case-actually-limited-mifepristone.html

Judge extends deadline in lawsuit seeking to pull abortion pill mifepristone from U.S. until Feb. 24

FRI, FEB 10 2023
Spencer Kimball

A federal judge in Texas has extended until Feb. 24 the deadline in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on Thursday ordered one of the companies that makes the pill, Danco Laboratories, to lay out its opposition to the attempt to pull the medication from the U.S. market. The anti-abortion physicians who originally filed the lawsuit then have until Feb. 24 to reply.

Continued: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/10/abortion-pill-judge-extends-deadline-in-lawsuit-seeking-to-pull-medication-from-us.html

10.02.2023

News

abortion pills

Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine

Danco Laboratories

FDA

Food and Drug Administration

GenBioPro

Matthew Kacsmaryk

mifepristone

Naral Pro-Choice America

United States

Human Rights

Law

Can Capitalism Save Abortion Access?

Peter Barker
February 4, 2023

Maureen Farrell worked as a midwife in West Virginia for two years and as a doula for six years. But this fall, she noticed a dramatic shift in her day-to-day life: More clients than ever were seeking miscarriage assistance — not because more of them were miscarrying, but because of the way these patients have been treated since September, as lawmakers said West Virginia has voted to ban abortion in virtually all circumstances.

“The actual medical care they received is the same. But vendor attitudes are understandably very different,” says Farrell. Under West Virginia’s new law, providers who perform abortions will be prosecuted, including prison terms. And since mifepristone and misoprostol — the same two-drug therapy used to terminate unwanted pregnancies — are prescribed to patients who are miscarrying, some doctors are wary of administering them even in perfectly legal circumstances. Farrell says one of her clients was forced to undergo three separate ultrasound appointments that confirmed her pregnancy was not viable before doctors finally prescribed the medication she needed to treat her symptoms. “Everyone’s nervous — and patients are paying for it,” says Farrell.

Continued: https://localtoday.news/va/can-capitalism-save-abortion-access-89613.html

04.02.2023