{"id":692,"date":"2024-03-29T12:04:49","date_gmt":"2024-03-29T12:04:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/29\/takeaways-from-the-supreme-court-arguments-over-the-abortion-drug-mifepristone\/"},"modified":"2024-03-29T12:04:49","modified_gmt":"2024-03-29T12:04:49","slug":"takeaways-from-the-supreme-court-arguments-over-the-abortion-drug-mifepristone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/2024\/03\/29\/takeaways-from-the-supreme-court-arguments-over-the-abortion-drug-mifepristone\/","title":{"rendered":"Takeaways from the Supreme Court arguments over the abortion drug mifepristone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A majority of Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical Tuesday of the idea of a nationwide ban or new limits on mifepristone, the primary drug used for medication abortions. <\/p>\n

The case was the first abortion-related hearing since the court reversed Roe v. Wade and the proceedings at time went into detail of the process and any complications of the use of medication abortion. <\/p>\n

At issue in the case are lower-court rulings that would have rolled back recent Food and Drug Administration decisions to ease access to the mifepristone. A district court had instituted a nationwide ban as well. <\/p>\n

But the case may simply be determined on whether the doctors who brought the original lawsuit had the ability to bring the case in the first place. <\/p>\n

Conservative and liberal justices demanded to know why access to mifepristone needed to be limited if the small number of doctors involved could simply exercise their own religious and conscientious objections individually. <\/p>\n

A decision is expected by July. <\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what to know from Tuesday\u2019s arguments: <\/p>\n

Conservatives tear into nationwide injunction<\/h2>\n

If things seemed to be going badly for the abortion pill challengers as Tuesday\u2019s hearing began to unfold in earnest, their prospects of prevailing appeared to grow even dimmer during the second hour of arguments, when Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch tore into the challengers\u2019 attorney over the nationwide impact caused by the lawsuit. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhy can\u2019t the court specify that this relief runs to precisely the parties before the court as opposed to looking to the agency in general and saying agency you can\u2019t do this anywhere?\u201d Roberts asked the attorney, Erin Hawley. <\/p>\n

As she began to explain how such a remedy would be \u201cimpractical,\u201d Gorsuch interjected to speak to the recent spike in universal injunctions. He said he went back \u201cand looked and there are exactly zero universal injunctions that were issued during Franklin Delano Roosevelt\u2019s 12 years in office \u2013 pretty consequential ones.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cAnd over the last four years or so, the number is something like 60 and maybe more than that,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd they\u2019re a relatively new thing. And you\u2019re asking us to extend and pursue this relatively new course, which this court has never adopted itself.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThis case seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide, legislative assembly on an FDA rule or any other government action,\u201d Gorsuch said. <\/p>\n

The Biden administration contends that even if some action in favor of the plaintiffs was warranted, it should not have affected the entire country as opposed to just the litigants in the case. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the court did \u2026 is enter sweeping nationwide relief that restricts access to mifepristone for every single woman in this country. And that causes profound harm,\u201d Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar said. <\/p>\n

Justices asked an unusual amount of detailed medical questions<\/h2>\n

Several justices asked questions beyond the law, seeking detailed answers about medical procedures and practices related to reproductive care and mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion. <\/p>\n

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sought more information on how often a doctors might need to perform emergency procedures for a patient who had taken drugs for a medication abortion, even if they object to abortion. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s my understanding that sometimes, the completion, it doesn\u2019t involve surgical intervention. Do you have a sense of how often?\u201d the liberal justice asked. <\/p>\n

Jackson also asked Erin Hawley, an attorney representing the abortion pill\u2019s challengers,\u00a0how close a doctor might need to be to a procedure they object to in order to be \u201ccomplicit.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cLike I \u2014 I work in the emergency room and this is going on? I\u2019m handing them a water bottle? I\u2019m \u2014 like, what do you mean complicit in the process?\u201d Jackson asked. <\/p>\n

At another point, conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett asked about a dilation and curettage, or D&C, the procedure to remove tissue from the uterus, and noted it did not necessarily mean that a doctor was removing a living embryo, since a D&C can happen after a miscarriage. She also asked specific medical questions about the need for tissue to be removed if an abortion wasn\u2019t complete after a medication. <\/p>\n

Barrett\u00a0also pressed if the elimination of the in-person visit to provide mifepristone \u2014 a step in medication abortion that the FDA permanently ended in 2023 \u2014 would \u201clead to mistakes in gestational aging which could increase the need for a D&C or the amount of bleeding.\u201d <\/p>\n

Medication abortion is only available for people through the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. Under current regulations, while a person does not need to see a provider in-person to receive drugs for a medication abortion, providers still must be available to assess gestational age and whether someone may have an ectopic pregnancy. Most medication abortions occur without an ultrasound. <\/p>\n

Because of safety issues, pregnant people are unable to use this method of abortion if they have an ectopic pregnancy, a rare event in which the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus. Even without an in-person visit, providers will ask a pregnant person a series of screening questions about pelvic pain, unusual bleeding, or if the person had an ectopic pregnancy previously. <\/p>\n

Alito and Thomas really tried hard to challenge FDA<\/h2>\n

Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, and fellow ardent abortion opponent Justice Clarence Thomas, pushed the question of whether anyone can actually challenge the FDA on drug approvals. <\/p>\n

The FDA wants to be \u201cinfallible,\u201d Alito said at one point. <\/p>\n

\u201cIs there anybody who can sue and get a judicial ruling on whether what FDA did was lawful? And maybe what they did was perfectly lawful. But shouldn\u2019t somebody be able to challenge that in court?\u201d he asked. <\/p>\n

Prelogar stressed that challengers to FDA drug approvals need to show concrete harm to themselves, not simply a wider objection to policy. <\/p>\n

Jackson, meanwhile, then flipped a question from Alito on its head to give the FDA\u2019s defenders an opportunity to argue that the agency is better suited to make calls on medical science than the courts. <\/p>\n

Congress gave the FDA the authority to regulate drugs more than 60 years ago, and in 1962 it was also given the authority to require that drug companies prove that the drugs are effective. Mifepristone was initially approved in 2000, but regulations around its use have shifted since then. <\/p>\n

Comstock Act looms large for future cases<\/h2>\n

Alito said that a long unenforced federal law banning the mailing of drugs used for abortions was not \u201cobscure\u201d but rather a \u201cprominent\u201d law. <\/p>\n

Alito\u2019s reference to the Comstock\u00a0Act, a 19th century statute outlawing the use of the mail to send various \u201clewd\u201d materials, is notable.\u00a0Some anti-abortion activists see the law as an avenue to end medication abortion, and perhaps all kinds of abortions. <\/p>\n

The Comstock Act has not been a central part of this case, but the challengers have gotten a little bit of traction at the lower-court level with their argument that the FDA acted unlawfully in its approach to mifepristone because it did not take into account to Comstock Act\u2019s criminal prohibitions on mailing drugs used for abortions. <\/p>\n

Prelogar countered on Tuesday that it is not the FDA\u2019s job to enforce criminal law, but that the agency did get advice at the time from the Justice Department about its interpretation of the law. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think that the Comstock provisions don\u2019t fall within FDA\u2019s lane,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

Defenders of the FDA have also argued that the Comstock Act\u2019s prohibitions are geared towards \u201cunlawful\u201d abortions, and this case is attempting to limit the access of mifepristone even in places where abortion is legal. <\/p>\n

Thomas also brought up the Comstock Act in questions for Danco, a mifepristone manufacturer that has intervened to defend the FDA\u2019s regulation. Danco\u2019s attorney said that this case was not an appropriate venue for the court to weigh the reach of the Comstock Act. <\/p>\n

Power of Trump\u2019s judicial nominees is clear<\/h2>\n

That the challenge to mifepristone reached the Supreme Court in such a short amount of time was no accident \u2013 a result of the \u201cjudge-shopping\u201d phenomenon seen most recently on major political issues including health care, firearms and abortion. <\/p>\n

The case challenging the FDA\u2019s approval of mifepristone and subsequent access changes was filed in the Amarillo Division of US District Court of the Northern District of Texas, where US District Judge\u00a0Matthew Kacsmaryk\u00a0\u2013 an appointee of Trump who had previously worked for a religious liberty legal organization \u2013 is assigned to hear all cases under local rules. <\/p>\n

The 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals threw out part of the ruling \u2013 saying Kacsmaryk was incorrect in blocking the drug\u2019s approval in 2000 \u2013 but left in the injunction against FDA\u2019s actions on access, a ruling that could have a major impact on how the agency and US drug companies operate. <\/p>\n

The high court essentially was left with no choice but to take up the case. <\/p>\n

The US Judicial Conference this month instituted process changes that would limit the guaranteed impact of judge shopping, but that doesn\u2019t mean social and political lawsuits won\u2019t continue. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A majority of Supreme Court justices appeared skeptical Tuesday of the idea of a nationwide ban or new limits on mifepristone, the primary drug used for medication abortions. The case was the first abortion-related hearing since the court reversed Roe v. Wade and the proceedings at time went into detail of the process and any …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"loftocean_post_primary_category":0,"loftocean_post_format_gallery":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_ids":"","loftocean_post_format_gallery_urls":"","loftocean_post_format_video_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_video_url":"","loftocean_post_format_video_type":"","loftocean_post_format_video":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_type":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_url":"","loftocean_post_format_audio_id":0,"loftocean_post_format_audio":"","loftocean-featured-post":"","loftocean-like-count":0,"loftocean-view-count":503,"tinysalt_single_post_intro_label":"","tinysalt_single_post_intro_description":"","tinysalt_hide_post_featured_image":"","tinysalt_post_featured_media_position":"","tinysalt_single_site_header_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header":"0","tinysalt_single_custom_sticky_site_header_style":"sticky-scroll-up","tinysalt_single_site_footer_source":"","tinysalt_single_custom_site_footer":"0","footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/retirednurseblog.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}