The Supreme Court stepped in to stay a lower court decision that would have imposed nationwide restrictions on access to a widely used abortion medication, but the court battle isn’t over
medication, but the court battle isn’t over. The high court’s order keeps mifepristone available as a fight over nationwide access continues to work its way through the legal system. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments in the case on May 17.
A majority of justices voted in favor of keeping mifepristone available, though it’s not clear which or how many. At least two justices publicly dissented from the unsigned order: Samuel Alito said the applicants “have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm” if the lower court’s decision were upheld, and Clarence Thomas who asserted he would have denied the Justice Department’s request to put the lower court’s decision on hold, but did not elaborate further.
“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights said in a statement on Friday. “The lower court ruling out of Texas has zero basis in fact or law — and yet it has sowed chaos, confusion and panic for patients and providers across the country, including those in states with strong protections for abortion rights.”
For now, patients and providers will still be able to access the care that they need as the case unfolds. Anything short of an order of this kind would have, in the words of Carrie Flaxman, senior director of public policy litigation and law at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, unleashed “really devastating impacts on access, access to care, and [sown] confusion and chaos for providers and patients.
Had the court sided with the anti-abortion advocates who brought the case, it could have ordered the FDA to rescind its approval of mifepristone, forcing medical providers in states where abortion remains legal to resort to other, less effective methods for early termination.
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