Washington:
The manufacturer of a widely used abortion pill on Friday asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that would limit access to the drug.
A U.S. federal appeals court placed restrictions on mifepristone last month, but the ruling was stayed pending an appeal to the Supreme Court.
Danco Laboratories, which markets mifepristone under the brand name Mifeprex, formally asked the nation’s highest court on Friday to hear the case.
The Justice Department is expected to file a letter in support of Danco’s request for the Supreme Court to review the lower court’s ruling.
Last month’s ruling by a three-judge panel of the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals would limit the use of mifepristone to the first seven weeks of pregnancy, instead of the current ten, and prevent it from being sent by mail is distributed.
It would also require the abortion pill, responsible for more than half of abortions in the United States, to be prescribed by a doctor.
Anti-abortion groups want mifepristone to be banned, claiming it is unsafe despite its long track record. The case is the latest skirmish in the fight for reproductive rights in the United States.
The appeals panel said the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which approved the abortion pill in 2000 and made it more readily available in 2016, “failed to address some key concerns about whether the drug would be safe for the women who use it. .”
At a hearing in May, the judges countered the government’s arguments that the decision on whether to allow the use of mifepristone should be left to the FDA.
In its letter to the Supreme Court, Danco said the 5th Circuit ruling “turns FDA-approved terms of use for Danco’s drug Mifeprex on its head.
“It’s doing this at the request of a group of plaintiffs who don’t prescribe or use the drug and whose real disagreement with the FDA is that they oppose all forms of abortion,” Danco said.
The case stems from an earlier ruling by a conservative Texas court judge that would have banned mifepristone.
The 5th Circuit blocked a ban on the abortion pill but placed restrictions on access.
Conservatives have a 6-to-3 majority on the Supreme Court, which in June last year struck down the constitutional right to abortion in a landmark ruling.
Since then, some 20 states, mostly in the South and Midwest, have outright banned or restricted access to abortion, while others, mainly on the coasts, have taken action to protect abortion.
The FDA estimates that 5.6 million Americans have used mifepristone to terminate pregnancies since its approval in 2000.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published through a syndicated feed.)