Appeals court embraces abortion-pill limits, sets up Supreme Court review - The Washington Post

Mifepristone is one of the the drugs in a two-drug regimen long approved by the Food and Drug Administration for abortion and post-miscarriage.  Persuaded from long experience that  the drug is safe and effective, the FDA loosened the terms of approval.  Nurse practitioners may issue it, pharmacies may sell it without necessity of an in-person visit by the woman patient. and it may be received by mail order.

But in Texas an extremely motivated United States District Judge - Matthew Kaczmaryk - restrained the FDA.  The Supreme Court granted an emergency stay of the decision which barred sale of the drug.  A group of physicians dedicated to stopping abortion, calling itself the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, launched the successful challenge.

Today a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals panel including the controversial conservative James Ho  in an opinion by Jennifer Elrod, allowed the bulk of the District Court's decision to stand. In other times this thin ideological gloss would not be sufficient to meet federal court "standing" requirements: 

 

According to the Doctors, when they treat women who are experiencing complications after taking mifepristone, they are required to perform or complete an abortion, or otherwise required to participate in a process that facilitates abortion. They maintain that personally conducting those procedures violates their sincerely held moral beliefs. The Doctors also contend that treatment of mifepristone patients diverts time and resources away from their ordinary patients, causes substantial mental and emotional distress, and exposes them to heightened malpractice risk and increased insurance costs. 

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-16-2023?r=zv1g&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email 

- GWC

Appeals court embraces abortion-pill limits, sets up Supreme Court review - The Washington Post

By Perry Stein

, 

Ann E. Marimow

 and 

Rachel Roubein

Updated August 16, 2023 at 8:17 p.m. ED

A federal appeals court said Wednesday that it would restrict access to a widely used abortion medication after finding that the federal government did not follow the proper process when it loosened regulations in 2016 to make the pill more easily available.

Food and Drug Administration decisions to allow the drug mifepristone to be taken later in pregnancy, be mailed directly to patients and be prescribed by a medical professional other than a doctor were not lawful, a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled.

Mifepristone will remain available for now under existing regulations while the litigation continues, in accordance with a Supreme Court order this spring. The Justice Department said it will go back to the Supreme Court to appeal Wednesday’s decision, which only partially upheld a lower-court judge’s ruling in favor of a coalition of antiabortion challengers.