A U.S. appeals court has restricted access to one of the most common means of abortion in the U.S. by blocking mailing of prescriptions of mifepristone.
A panel of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is requiring that the abortion pill be distributed only in-person at clinics.
“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” the ruling states.
Judges have long deferred to the FDA’s judgments on the safety and appropriate regulation of drugs.
FDA officials under President Donald Trump have repeatedly stated the agency is conducting a new review of mifepristone’s safety, at the direction of the president.
The judges noted in their ruling that FDA “could not say when that review might be complete and admitted it was still collecting data.”
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Since the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed enforcement of abortion bans, prescriptions by mail have become a major way that abortions are provided — including to states where bans are in place.
“This is going to affect patients’ access to abortion and miscarriage care in every state in the nation,” said Julia Kaye, an ACLU lawyer.
“When telemedicine is restricted, rural communities, people with low incomes, people with disabilities, survivors of intimate partner violence and communities of color suffer the most.”
The decision sets up a likely appeal to the Supreme Court.
The conservative-majority high court overturned abortion as a nationwide right in 2022 but unanimously preserved access to mifepristone two years later.
That 2024 decision sidestepped the core issues, however, by ruling that the anti-abortion doctors behind the case didn’t have legal standing to sue.
Weather-ish…….Life begins at fertilization when a sperm cell from the male merges with an egg cell from the female, forming a unique zygote that contains a complete set of genetic information.
@nacho business
What a surprise that you don’t know how to spell “Whether”.
The baby doesn’t get a death sentence, because the baby doesn’t yet exist. How many times do you have to be told this?
“WHETHER” you like it or not, a baby is not created at conception. It’s about time you got over it.
Weather the pregnancy occurs due to bad timing, bad judgment, rape, incest or other factors why is it that the parents live on and the baby gets the death sentence? My body my choice? If mom wants to abort her body that’s fine but the baby inside is a separate human and has no choice. If the pregnancy occurs through rape or incest lets kill the father and let the baby live and be adopted out.
I sure hope the people making these stupid rules are prepared to pay and take care of all the children that result because of their archaic, outdated ways of thinking.
How is this blocking access? You can’t get high dose ibuprofen without a prescription and going into a pharmacy and consulting with a pharmacist. Why would it be different for any other prescription medication, particularly one that could very easily be misused and
with serious consequences.