“The entry of a brief administrative stay is standard operating procedure whenever the Supreme Court is asked to consider an emergency request like this one. It gives the court sufficient time to consider the parties’ arguments before ruling. We look forward to explaining why the FDA has not met its heavy burden to pause the parts of the district court’s decision that restore the critical safeguards for women and girls that were unlawfully removed by the FDA,” she said.
This Supreme Court’s decision means that for the time being mifepristone remains legal up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, and can be mailed and administered via telemedicine without an in-person doctor’s visit.
Mifepristone is the first drug used in what is commonly a two-step regimen for a chemical abortion. The pill works to kill an unborn baby by cutting off the nutrients necessary for it to continue developing.
Chemical abortions now account for over half of all U.S. abortions.
Last Friday’s ruling by the Texas judge to suspend the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone was made on the grounds that approval was given “based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions.”
On Thursday a three-judge panel from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana granted a partial stay of Kacsmaryk’s April 7 ruling while reinstating certain mifepristone restrictions lifted by the FDA after 2016.