In December, the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration case, in which restrictions surrounding mifepristone will be considered. Originally, the state of Texas was the only one in the country included in the lawsuit, but a judge has ruled that three more will be allowed to join in as well.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk granted a motion allowing Idaho, Missouri, and Kansas to join as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. The states argued that the case will affect them, particularly as “out-of-state organizations are sending thousands of abortion pills into Intervenor states, relying on the very actions by FDA that are challenged in this case.”
Though the FDA tried to keep the states from joining, Kacsmaryk refused, saying they have a right to argue their cases as well.
Planned Parenthood has already responded with disapproval. “It’s no coincidence that you are seeing Idaho in front of the Supreme Court time and time again,” CEO of Planned Parenthood Great Northwest, Hawai’i, Indiana, Kentucky, Rebecca Gibron said in a statement. “They are consistently at the forefront of the battle against reproductive rights that their own state doesn’t support, and is actively being harmed by, with some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country. Lawmakers here are doing everything in their power to take us backward and ignore decades of proof that Mifepristone is a safe and effective option. For the sake of patients everywhere, we hope the court will see through this embarrassing attempt to grasp at legal straws.”
Kacsmaryk has already been villainized by the abortion industry, and has even received death threats, with one of those threats leading to an arrest. Kacsmaryk ruled last year that the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of mifepristone should be revoked. Mifepristone is used as the first drug in the abortion pill regimen; it blocks progesterone and essentially starves the preborn child of oxygen and nutrients. The second drug in the regimen, misoprostol, induces contractions and forces the woman to deliver the body of her baby. Should mifepristone be taken off the market, abortionists plan to pivot to using misoprostol only, which has been shown in some studies to have a higher failure rate.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay on Kacsmaryk’s ruling, and the Supreme Court further ruled that it can at least temporarily remain on the market. However, there is the potential that mifepristone could remain on the market only under the FDA conditions in place prior to 2016, eliminating the ability for it to be shipped through the mail and sold at retail pharmacies.
Oral arguments in the case are expected to be heard in the spring, with a decision likely to be handed down in June.
