(Washington) The Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday inflicted a setback on the conservatives most opposed to the right to abortion, by maintaining access to the abortion pill, with President Joe Biden nevertheless calling for people not to let their guard down.
In their unanimous decision, the nine judges of the conservative-majority court denied the “interest in bringing an action,” a condition for taking legal action, of the plaintiffs – associations of doctors or practitioners opposed to abortion who do not prescribe or use the pill mifepristone, used in the majority of abortions in the country. They therefore set aside the appeal decision, which they had suspended in any case.
An appeals court, made up of ultraconservative judges, reinstated in 2023 several of the restrictions on access to mifepristone, a pill used for medical abortions, lifted by the American Medicines Agency (FDA) since 2016.
“Plaintiffs have not demonstrated that relaxing the FDA rules would likely actually harm them,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his decision on behalf of the Supreme Court.
“For this reason, the federal courts are not the appropriate avenue to address plaintiffs’ concerns about the FDA’s actions,” he adds, noting that they can bring them to the executive or legislative branch.
Democratic President Joe Biden, who made protecting the right to abortion a focus of his campaign for the November election against his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, took note of the decision, but stressed that “the fight continued.”
“This decision does not change the fact that millions of Americans today live under cruel abortion bans because of Donald Trump,” added his vice-president Kamala Harris. “Nor the threats about medical abortions,” she added.
In its landmark June 2022 ruling overturning the federal guarantee of the right to abortion, the conservative-majority court gave states full latitude to legislate in this area. Since then, about twenty have banned voluntary abortion (abortion), whether performed by medication or surgery, or have strictly regulated it.
Donald Trump prides himself on having, through his appointments of three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, enabled the reversal of jurisprudence in June 2022.
The Guttmacher Institute, a pro-abortion research center whose studies are authoritative, said it was “relieved” by the Supreme Court’s ruling on mifepristone, “the only reasonable decision” possible, but deplored that this complaint “in bad faith and without factual or scientific basis” reached the highest court in the country.
“Even after the failure of this unfounded appeal, we must remain vigilant. The anti-abortion movement relentlessly pursues its goal of banning abortion nationwide,” Destiny Lopez, co-president of the Guttmacher Institute, added in a statement.
The president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, Nancy Northup, welcomed the decision, but also said that “this baseless case should never have gotten this far.”
“Unfortunately the attacks against abortion pills will not stop there,” she warned, in a press release emphasizing that the anti-abortion movement was “ready to do anything to block access to them.”
The conservative Christian organization Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represented the plaintiffs, said it was “disappointed that the court did not rule on the merits of the FDA’s illegitimate actions,” but reiterated that the agency’s rule-making easing endangers women’s health.
Citing risks that have been ruled out by scientific consensus, the appeal decision, if it had been confirmed, would have reduced the limit of ten weeks of pregnancy to seven, prohibited the sending of tablets by post and made prescription compulsory again. exclusively by a doctor.
Nearly two-thirds of abortions (63%) in the United States in 2023 were performed medically, the Guttmacher Institute reported in March.
