The US Supreme Court announced on Wednesday that it was taking up the issue of the abortion pill, used in more than half of abortions in the United States and the subject of an intense legal battle.
The high court will have to rule on a decision by an appeals court having reinstated restrictions on the use of the abortion pill, which could apply to all American states, but which is currently suspended.
The Supreme Court, the institution that decides major social debates in the United States, should study the case in the coming months to render a decision by the end of its annual session, in June 2024.
This will be the most important intervention by the Court, currently with a conservative majority, on the question of abortion since it annulled the constitutional guarantee of voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in June 2022, causing an earthquake in the country. The White House was quick to react.
“President Biden and the vice president remain firmly committed to defending women’s access to reproductive care,” his spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement on Wednesday.
President Biden and the Vice President remain strongly committed to defending women’s access to reproductive care
If the decision of the court of appeal, in August in New Orleans, was confirmed, this would result in particular in a return to a maximum limit of seven weeks of pregnancy instead of ten to benefit from an abortion, a ban of sending the abortion pill by post and the reinstatement of the obligation to prescribe exclusively by a doctor.
Texas judge
The question is that of access to mifepristone (RU 486) which, combined with another pill, has been used by 5.6 million women since its approval by the United States Medicines Agency (FDA) in 2000.
The legal headache began when a federal judge in Texas, appointed by Donald Trump and known for his Christian faith as well as his ultraconservative positions, withdrew the marketing authorization for mifepristone on April 7 after having been seized by anti-abortion activists. Despite scientific consensus, he considered that it presented risks to women’s health.
The Federal Court of Appeal in New Orleans then allowed the abortion pill to remain authorized, but by limiting the facilities of access granted by the FDA over the years.
It is this decision, for the moment suspended, which will be studied in depth by the nine wise men in Washington, at the request of the government of Democrat Joe Biden and the manufacturer of the pill, the Danco laboratory.
“The Court has never invalidated a long-standing FDA authorization, as it is asked to rule here,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
“We hope the justices will uphold the FDA’s scientific authority in this baseless case,” the abortion pill information network Plan C also said. “But the current makeup of the Court” and its decision to June 2022 “does not bode well for a good decision. »
Escape from Texas
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority following the appointments made under the presidency of Donald Trump, annulled its judgment Roe v. Wade which has guaranteed since 1973 the right of American women to have an abortion, and has given each state the freedom to legislate on the matter.
Since then, the country has been fractured between the twenty or so states that have banned or strictly restricted access to abortion, mainly located in the south and center of the country, and those on the coasts that have adopted new guarantees.
At the beginning of the week, a Texan with a risky pregnancy had to leave Texas, where abortions are prohibited except in rare exceptions, to be able to have an abortion, because her fetus was affected by a chromosomal anomaly associated with serious malformations. The fact that she had to flee her state to “receive the care she needed” is “scandalous”, judged Joe Biden on Tuesday.
More than half of abortions in the United States in 2020 were medical, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a specialist on the subject. Abortions using mifepristone and misoprostol within the permitted time frame are very safe and effective, all experts insist.
