Ruling on abortion pill access may be short-lived [View all]
By Jesse Wegman / The New York Times
Rarely has a straightforward 9-0 decision at the Supreme Court felt as unsettling as it did on Thursday.
The justices’ unanimous ruling, in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, rejected a challenge to the most commonly used abortion pill, but it did so only on procedural grounds, without considering the merits of the lawsuit. That means another challenge to the drug, mifepristone, will probably reach the court before long. Based on the right-wing supermajority’s open hostility to reproductive rights, there’s good reason to worry.
For now, at least, and purely as a matter of law, the justices got it right, which these days is saying something.
The case decided on Thursday was brought by a group of associations and doctors who oppose abortion and argued that mifepristone is unsafe for the women who use it. They wanted the courts to overturn recently instituted Food and Drug Administration rules that made mifepristone easier to get and use, so they maneuvered their case in front of a sympathetic federal judge in Texas, Matthew Kacsmaryk, who has publicly opposed abortion and ruled in the doctors’ favor. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which has somehow figured out how to out-radical this Supreme Court, upheld much of Kacsmaryk’s decision.
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/comment-ruling-on-abortion-pill-access-may-be-short-lived/
= new reply since forum marked as read