USA – The Current Attack on Abortion Pills Will Fail. The Next One Will Be So Much Worse.

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
MARCH 26, 2024

There are always a couple of tells when the most conservative Supreme Court in more than a century finds itself adjudicating a truly mortifying and meritless case. One is that it’s coming up by way of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, a court that so consistently shovels its worst constitutional garbage upward that the high court conservatives are often forced to reluctantly lob it back. Another tell is when the facts of the case are so laugh-out-loud insane that even conservative justices can’t bring themselves to adopt them or the underpinning legal reasoning with a straight face. There’s yet a third tell: when the conservative justices start injecting a bunch of nonsense and randomized pet peeves into oral argument to distract from how embarrassing it would be to discuss the merits of the actual case.

Continued: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/03/mifepristone-supreme-court-alito-national-abortion-ban.html

‘Deeply Disturbing’: Federal Court Rules Texas Can Ban Emergency Abortions

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray called the 5th Circuit's ruling "a horrifying and astonishingly dangerous decision from a court that has shown repeatedly they have absolutely no regard for women's lives."

JAKE JOHNSON
Jan 03, 2024

The conservative-dominated 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled late Tuesday that Texas hospitals and physicians are not required by federal law to perform abortions under emergency circumstances.

The 25-page decision stems from a legal challenge that Texas filed in response to guidance issued in July 2022 by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. The guidance states that the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) "protects providers when offering legally-mandated, life- or health-saving abortion services in emergency situations."

Continued: https://www.commondreams.org/news/5th-circuit-texas-abortion

The Supreme Court will hear its biggest abortion case since it overruled Roe v. Wade

The justices will decide whether to ban mifepristone, a drug used in half of US abortions.

By Ian Millhiser
Dec 13, 2023

The Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it will give a full hearing to a long-simmering dispute over whether far-right federal courts may ban the abortion drug mifepristone.

Mifepristone is part of a two-drug treatment that causes the uterus to expel pregnancy tissue. This two-drug regime, which may be taken up to the 70th day of a pregnancy, is often a safer alternative than surgical abortion — and it is also a less invasive procedure. More than half of all US abortions are medication abortions, which use mifepristone.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/scotus/2023/12/13/23992173/supreme-court-abortion-ban-mifepristone-danco-fda-alliance-hippocratic-medicine

Abortion pill mifepristone: An explainer and research roundup about its history, safety and future

Amid pending court cases and ballot initiatives, journalistic coverage of medication abortion has never been more crucial. This piece aims to help inform the narrative with scientific evidence.

by Naseem S. Miller
November 1, 2023

Access to mifepristone, a medication that’s used for the safe termination of early pregnancy, hangs in the balance while the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to take up a case that could determine the legal future of the abortion medication.

In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that mifepristone should not be prescribed past the seventh week of pregnancy, prescribed via telemedicine, or shipped to patients through the mail. In September, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to consider a challenge to that ruling.

Continued: https://journalistsresource.org/health/mifepristone-research-roundup/

A Trump-Stacked Court Hopes to Limit Access to the Abortion Pill. The Final Decision Now Lies With SCOTUS.

8/17/2023
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals released a decision on Wednesday, Aug. 16, that dismissed a challenge to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of mifepristone, but would sharply restrict access to medication abortion nationwide and eliminate telemedicine abortion. The decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA remains on hold until final review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“While the court has acknowledged that mifepristone—both brand and generic versions—can stay on the market, they are insisting we should roll back the clock to 2000 and put the medication under lock and key,” said Kirsten Moore, director of Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project (EMAA Project). “The extremist judges ignored the FDA, our basic rights, and more than 20 years of scientific evidence showing mifepristone is safe and effective, rolling back decades of advancement in the standard of care. This is a dangerous precedent for FDA’s scientific review authority.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/08/17/abortion-pills-fifth-circuit-mifepristone/

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

What to Know About the Latest Court Ruling on the Abortion Pill

The upshot: Don’t panic.

MADISON PAULY, Mother Jones
Aug 16, 2023

Earlier this spring, the Supreme Court hit pause on a controversial ruling in a massive anti-abortion lawsuit with the potential to eliminate nationwide access to the most common method of abortion. The case, brought by anti-abortion organizations and doctors, challenged the FDA’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, a pill used in medication abortion.

In April, a far-right federal district court judge in Texas had sided with the anti-abortion doctors, issuing an unprecedented order to suspend mifepristone’s approval. But before his decision could take effect, the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to step in and pause the order while it went through appeals. The Court agreed.

Continued: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/08/abortion-pill-mifepristone-texas-supreme-court-ruling/

‘I don’t know if I’m going to make it’: With abortion drug’s future in limbo, Georgia couple shares their cautionary tale

By Elizabeth Cohen and Amanda Sealy, CNN
Fri May 26, 2023

Depending on the outcome of a federal lawsuit, more women having early miscarriages could end up like Melissa Novak: septic, in the hospital and needing emergency surgery to survive. “We didn’t know if she was going to live or die,” said Novak’s husband, Stewart Day.

Novak had a miscarriage in March and was prescribed only one of the pills in a two-pill combination approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for women in her situation. Although the medication she took, called misoprostol, can help a woman have a complete and safe miscarriage, it’s not approved by the FDA to do so, and studies show that it’s less effective than when used in combination with the second drug, mifepristone.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/25/health/georgia-medication-abortion-miscarriage/index.html

USA – Appeals court judges embrace anti-abortion speculation

BY: SOFIA RESNICK AND KELCIE MOSELEY-MORRIS
MAY 18, 2023

America’s major medical institutions and drug policy scholars have roundly denounced as “pseudoscience” many of the claims brought by anti-abortion groups in a high-profile federal lawsuit asking the Food and Drug Administration to revoke its 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, one half of a two-drug regimen that has become the most common form of pregnancy termination post-Roe v. Wade.

But the appeals court’s three-judge panel that heard oral arguments Wednesday appeared to be persuaded not by the medical consensus in this case, but by some of the evidence brought forward by plaintiffs that consists largely of anecdotes, speculation, and cherry-picked studies brought by a handful of anti-abortion medical groups and doctors.

Continued: https://newjerseymonitor.com/2023/05/18/appeals-court-judges-embrace-anti-abortion-speculation/

Federal judges grill Biden administration on abortion pill

During a two-hour oral argument, the judges appeared sympathetic to an anti-abortion medical group seeking to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and JOSH GERSTEIN
05/17/2023

NEW ORLEANS — Three federal judges seemed poised to rule against the Biden administration in its efforts to preserve access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

During an occasionally combative, two-hour hearing Wednesday before a panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, the judges — all Republican appointees — grilled attorneys from the Justice Departments and Danco Laboratories, the pill’s manufacturer, who are battling to keep the drug available in the U.S.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/05/17/federal-judges-appear-skeptical-of-biden-administration-in-abortion-pills-case-00097477