Supreme Court reinstates restrictions on abortion pill



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The court’s three liberal judges said they would have rejected the Trump administration’s request for a suspension. In a dissenting opinion, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said federal government rules limiting the dispensing of the abortion pill, mifepristone, are medically unnecessary and present “an unnecessary, unjustifiable, irrational and undue burden” on women .

“Government policy now allows patients to receive prescriptions for potent opioids without leaving their homes, while requiring women to go to a doctor to take mifepristone, turn around, go home and ingest it without leaving home. surveillance, ”they wrote. They also said the Trump administration had failed to prove how he would be harmed by allowing the courier delivery of the pills to continue while the courts weighed the merits of the case.

A shorthanded Supreme Court refused to intervene in the same case in October, allowing abortion clinics to continue distributing the pills by telemedicine and mail, which they said allowed patients and staff to stay safer during the pandemic.

The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to reconsider its request after Barrett joined the bench. The administration said continuing to enforce the long-standing FDA rules on mifepristone, approved 20 years ago, “does not create a substantial burden on access to abortion.”

The United States Civil Liberties Union, which represented abortion clinics challenging FDA rules, said in a statement that the court ruling “exposes patients to unnecessary risk from COVID-19” and called on the Biden’s incoming administration to drop the FDA rule.

“It is mind-boggling that the Trump administration’s top priority on its way is to put even more people at risk unnecessarily during this gloomy pandemic winter – and frightening that the Supreme Court has allowed it,” Julia Kaye said, lawyer ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project.

The ACLU, in a separate litigation, is also pushing for courts to permanently lift FDA restrictions on drugs for abortion, which is the most common method of abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers and anti-abortion groups have called on the FDA to completely revoke access to the abortion pill.

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