Legal battle over widely used abortion drug reaches Supreme Court – follow live

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has been summoned to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to testify on the court’s ethnic rules following recent revelations about Justice Clarence Thomas’ finances.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin has asked Roberts to appear before the committee on May 2.

The future of abortion access is once again in the hands of the Supreme Court, which is reviewing a challenge by anti-abortion activists to overturn the federal government’s approval of mifepristone, a drug widely used for medical abortion procedures and the miscarriage care.

Withdrawing government approval could devastate abortion access and miscarriage care for millions of Americans across the country, even in states where access is legally protected.

Federal court rulings that undermine the FDA’s two-decade-old approval of a widely used abortion drug could throw the government’s drug regulatory process into chaos that extends well beyond the fight over mifepristone, according to Dr. Jack Resneck Jr, president of the American Medical Association.

Write in an essay for The New York Times on Tuesday that the political volatility surrounding the drug in recent years could expose the FDA to challenges for “many vaccines, including those that reduce the risks of serious illness from Covid-19.”

“We should expect lawsuits against common types of safe and highly effective hormonal contraceptives, including emergency contraception,” he added. “Also at risk: drugs used to treat cancer and arthritis that may incidentally affect unintended pregnancies, drugs to prevent or treat HIV, and drugs intended to provide gender-affirming care.”

Last month, five women denied abortions under various overlapping anti-abortion laws in Texas filed a lawsuit against the state, marking the first time pregnant women have taken legal action themselves after a wave of restrictions following the US Supreme Court decision below Roe vs. Wade.

The plaintiffs, two of whom are pregnant, told their stories outside the Texas Capitol, warning that the state’s anti-abortion measures put pregnant patients at serious risk of illness, injury and death.

A Texas Republican congressman evaded questions about a federal court’s decision to revoke a more than 20-year-old approval for a commonly used abortion drug, suggesting instead that “women have many other problems besides abortion” and that America should. “Talk about the other things that are happening in this world.”

US Representative Tony Gonzales told CNN state of the union earlier this month that the topic was about “states’ rights,” but stumbled when asked how that explains a federal court ruling that will have a dramatic impact on abortion access across the country if it enters in force.

The order of Supreme Court Judge Samuel Alito, who presides over the district where the mifepristone challenge was filed, was published in the so-called “shadow file,” where the court handles both procedural forms and emergency motions that can have profound implications.

Alito’s brief order to stay a federal court decision that would reverse FDA approval for mifepristone maintains the status quo until midnight Friday at the latest.

But it is not clear what the court will do next.

The court will not rule on the merits of the case, but will determine how or if mifepristone can be dispensed while the case continues.

After the court makes a decision, the case returns to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana. Both sides will have the opportunity to submit briefs and the case will be argued before a three-judge panel on May 17.

The judge presiding over a challenge to a widely used abortion drug reportedly failed to disclose to members of Congress that he wrote an article attacking abortion rights and transgender health care in a right-wing legal journal while in office. He was running for the post appointed by Trump. on the federal judiciary.

Abortion is effectively banned in more than a dozen states, mostly in the South, following the US Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the constitutional right to abortion care last June.

Shortly after the measure was approved by the Republican-controlled state legislature on April 13, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law a bill banning abortion at six weeks of pregnancy.

The law will strand Floridians “in a vast abortion desert” and force patients to travel more than 1,000 miles to legally access abortion care, according to Elisabeth Smith, the Center’s director of state policy and advocacy. of Reproductive Rights.

Following the Supreme Court’s decision to revoke Roe vs. Wade Marking a significant victory for the anti-abortion movement and the conservative Christian legal groups that have fueled that campaign, last year anti-abortion activists took aim at medical abortion, the most common form of abortion care in the US.

Here’s how the case played out in recent months:

• In November, the group Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Amarillo, Texas, on behalf of a group of anti-abortion activists attached to the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which organized that month with an address in yellow.
• Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a former right-wing activist lawyer who was appointed to the federal judiciary by Donald Trump, held a hearing on the case on March 15 in Amarillo.
• Earlier this month, Judge Kacsmaryk issued a ruling to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone. His order would take effect a week later, pending an appeal decision.
• But in a separate ruling in Washington state, a federal judge ruled that the FDA cannot change the status quo when it comes to approving mifepristone, potentially leading to conflicting decisions about the drug.
• Abortion rights advocates, providers, major medical groups, and legal analysts condemned the ruling, and the US Department of Justice and Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, filed an appeal.
• That appeal went to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which has jurisdiction over the Amarillo court.
• A three-judge panel on the Fifth Circuit blocked part of the judge’s ruling, but attacked mail-order prescriptions and rules extending the drug’s approval for use up to 10 weeks pregnant.
• The Supreme Court blocked the Texas ruling while it considers the case.

Abortion providers, clinics, and abortion rights advocates and patients await a decision from the US Supreme Court. Roe vs. Wade last year.

Civil rights advocates and legal groups were shocked by lower court rulings aimed at FDA approval of mifepristone, decisions they say are “detached” from both the law and the law. science, including decades of research and guidance from leading public health and medical organizations. .