The Supreme Court of the United States decided this Friday to maintain full access for women in this country to the abortion pill mifepristone while a lawsuit on the matter is resolved in lower courts. The decision supposes a temporary relief for those affected and the associations that represent them.
The resolution of the US High Court temporarily blocks the restrictions imposed by the court of appeals for the Fifth Circuit in its resolution a few days ago against a previous ruling in which a Texas judge had ordered a complete ban on access to the drug.
The appeals court, based in New Orleans and jurisdiction in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, had opted for a Solomonic path consisting of limiting access to the pill.
First of all, the Louisiana magistrates imposed that the drug only be available in the first seven weeks of pregnancy instead of the ten that were in force since an extension of its access decreed in 2016 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The same court also recovered the obligation to withdraw the product in person, and no longer by mail, after three visits to the doctor instead of just one.
The Department of Justice of the Government of Joe Biden asked the Supreme Court to urgently suspend these restrictions from the appeals body until the judges resolved the merits of the matter.
The Supreme Court agreed and suspended these limitations until last Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. But, hours before the deadline, and through an order signed by Judge Samuel Alito, the High Court announced that it was given 48 more hours to decide whether or not to maintain them during the procedure.
The lawsuit, launched by the anti-abortion group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, affects the health authorization that the FDA issued for mifepristone in 2020.
The dispute also came to light, ten months after the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority of 6 to 3, suppressed the right to abortion that the court itself had instituted in 1973 through its ruling in the case 'Roe vs. Wade'.
In the first instance, the ultra-conservative federal judge of Texas Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by former President Donald Trump, ordered the withdrawal of the drug throughout the country. He did it through a sentence riddled with criticism of "abortionists."
