more than 100 studies<\/a> that have found that mifepristone is safe, and that serious complications from taking it are rare.<\/p>\nLiz Murrill, the state\u2019s attorney general, said the regulations had resulted in about 1,000 illegal abortions in the state each month, and thousands of dollars in Medicaid costs to treat women harmed by mifepristone.<\/p>\n
In a statement on Thursday, Ms. Murrill said, \u201cIt\u2019s shocking that the Supreme Court would block this common-sense return to medically ethical practices and oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Justice Alito, in his dissent, agreed with the state that its ban had been \u201cthwarted by certain medical providers, private organizations and states that abhor laws like Louisiana\u2019s and seek to undermine their enforcement.\u201d He characterized the shipping of abortion medication into states with strict bans as the \u201cperpetration of a scheme\u201d to undercut the Supreme Court\u2019s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, which he noted \u201crestored the right of each state to decide how to regulate abortions within its borders.\u201d<\/p>\n
The manufacturers, Danco Laboratories and GenBioPro, told the justices that a ruling in Louisiana\u2019s favor could cause broad disruptions to the pharmaceutical industry and lead to state-by-state second-guessing of all sorts of drug regulations. The companies pointed to the Supreme Court\u2019s decision two years ago rejecting a similar challenge from anti-abortion doctors. In that case, the court unanimously held that the F.D.A.\u2019s loosening of regulations had not caused the type of direct harm to the doctors that would give them standing to sue.<\/p>\n
Abby Long, a spokeswoman for Danco, expressed relief in a statement on Thursday, saying that the Fifth Circuit\u2019s ruling had been \u201cunprecedented and immediately caused nationwide chaos and confusion for patients and providers prescribing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The clash over access to mifepristone has put the Trump administration in a difficult political position ahead of the midterm elections. Many of the president\u2019s supporters oppose abortion, but restricting access is not considered a broadly winning position in many critical contests.<\/p>\n
While Justice Department lawyers defended the F.D.A. in the lower courts, they have not said whether the administration ultimately supports allowing the pills to be mailed. Rather, administration lawyers have said that the F.D.A. is conducting a review of mifepristone\u2019s safety and have asked the lower courts to delay Louisiana\u2019s lawsuit until that review is complete.<\/p>\n
But after losing in the appeals court, the administration made the unusual decision to forgo any filing at the Supreme Court, taking no position on how the justices should rule.<\/p>\n
Julia Kaye, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union\u2019s Reproductive Freedom Project, criticized the administration\u2019s silence.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen nationwide access to a critical abortion and miscarriage medication was on the line, the Trump administration refused to defend the F.D.A.\u2019s action,\u201d she said in a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Medication abortion usually involves a two-drug regimen. Mifepristone blocks a hormone necessary for pregnancy to continue, followed 24 to 48 hours later by a second medication, misoprostol, which causes contractions similar to a miscarriage. The Louisiana case targets mifepristone, which the F.D.A. approved for abortion in 2000. Misoprostol, which is also used for other medical conditions, is not affected by the Fifth Circuit ruling.<\/p>\n
In April, a district court judge in Louisiana said the state was likely to win its challenge to the regulation, but declined to pause the availability of pills by mail while the lawsuit proceeded. Instead, the judge gave the F.D.A. time to complete the safety review of mifepristone.<\/p>\n
In its ruling earlier this month, the Fifth Circuit sided with Louisiana, echoing the state\u2019s arguments that the F.D.A.\u2019s regulations were \u201cundermining its laws protecting unborn human life\u201d and also \u201ccausing it to spend Medicaid funds on emergency care for women harmed by mifepristone,\u201d in an order written by Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee. He was joined by Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, another Trump appointee, and Judge Leslie Southwick, who was appointed by President George W. Bush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that a widely used abortion medication could continue to be prescribed by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":232674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[85962,17075,1452,17074,81829,86404,1775,7050,85951,9,11,10,30483,11771,17080,68592,1069,1876],"class_list":["post-232673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-danco-laboratories","tag-decisions-and-verdicts","tag-donald-j","tag-federal-courts-us","tag-food-and-drug-administration","tag-genbiopro-inc","tag-louisiana","tag-medicaid","tag-mifeprex-ru-486","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-regulation-and-deregulation-of-industry","tag-suits-and-litigation-civil","tag-supreme-court-us","tag-telemedicine","tag-trump","tag-united-states-politics-and-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=232673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/232673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/232674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=232673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=232673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=232673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}