Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary stay Friday of a Texas judge’s ruling last week that blocked the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a common abortion drug and would have restricted access to the pills.
Alito’s administrative stay is in effect until April 19, when the full Supreme Court is expected to issue an order on the matter.
On April 7, Texas US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, ordered a hold on federal approval of the abortion pill mifepristone – which was greenlit by the FDA more than two decades ago.
Minutes later, Washington state US District Judge Thomas O. Rice, a Barack Obama appointee, barred authorities from restricting access to mifepristone in at least 17 states where Democrats sued to protect availability.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld parts of Kacsmaryk’s nationwide injunction, which limited the FDA’s attempts to expand access to the drug, but stayed Kacsmaryk’s suspension of the agency’s 2000 approval of mifepristone.
The Biden administration and Danco Laboratories – the company that manufactures mifepristone – petitioned the Supreme Court to stay Kacsmaryk’s ruling.
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US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the Supreme Court to allow the drug to remain in use on Friday, arguing that the lower court ruling in Texas was “unprecedented.”
Prelogar argued that even enforcing the 5th Circuit’s ruling “would be almost equally disruptive,” because mifepristone currently on the market “would immediately become misbranded” and the generic version would no longer have valid FDA approval.
Mifepristone is used in more than half of all abortions nationwide as the first of a two-drug regimen that is typically used to terminate a pregnancy with medication rather than a medical procedure.
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More than half of Americans – 53% – said in a Pew Research Center survey released on Monday that they believe the use of a prescription pill or pills to terminate a pregnancy should be legal in their state.
Nearly 10 months ago, the majority conservative Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide, leading to dozens of state efforts to outlaw abortion.
Alito authored the majority opinion in the June 2022 case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.