The Supreme Court announced Wednesday it will decide this term on the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone, marking the first time the conservative majority high court will rule on reproductive rights since it overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
Both the Biden administration and mifepristone’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, had asked the justices to overturn a lower-court ruling from this year that would make obtaining the pill, which is used in more than half of all abortions in the U.S., more difficult.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, based in New Orleans, upheld a portion of a federal judge’s ruling this spring that said the Food and Drug Administration didn’t follow proper procedures when it began loosening regulations for obtaining mifepristone, which has been on the market for two decades since its approval.
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The recent changes in question included regulations that allowed the drug to be taken later in pregnancy, to be mailed directly to patients, and to be prescribed by a medical professional other than a doctor.
That increase in access to mifepristone irked anti-abortion rights doctors in the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, who demanded that the pill be taken off the market entirely in a lawsuit filed in Amarillo, Texas, where the sitting federal judge is Matthew J. Kacsmaryk—a Donald Trump appointee who has long opposed abortion rights.
Kacsmaryk sided with the group’s request in full, ruling to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone entirely. Before that ruling could go into effect, however, the 5th Circuit reversed a portion of it, which would have kept the drug available with the same restrictions to access it had in 2016, like requiring a doctor’s visit. Before either ruling could take effect, the Supreme Court ruled in April that both decisions would be put on ice until it could make a determination.
Mifepristone is one pill in a two-drug regime that could be taken up to the 70th day of a pregnancy in recent years. It’s often heralded as a safer, cheaper, and less invasive alternative to surgical abortion.
The Supreme Court said Wednesday that it would not review a separate request to consider a total challenge to the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone from 2000,but will determine if the circuit court’s decision to restrict access to the pill should remain.
