A U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday that access to the abortion drug mifepristone must be restricted. Although the order won’t take effect right away, it prohibits telemedicine prescriptions and mail shipments of the medication, Reuters reports.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans refrained from ordering that the medicine be completely taken off the market, as a lower court did.
Following an emergency order from the U.S. Supreme Court in April maintaining the status quo throughout the appeal, mifepristone is still currently available.
Requests for comment from the anti-abortion groups contesting the drug’s approval as well as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the pill, did not immediately elicit a response.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas, issued an order that was being reviewed by a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit in April. Although it was an effective preliminary decision while the lawsuit was in progress, Kacsmaryk stated that he was likely to make it permanent in the end.
The decision is the result of a lawsuit filed in November by four anti-abortion organisations, including the recently founded Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion doctors.
They claim the FDA authorised mifepristone improperly in 2000 and failed to assess the drug’s safety when taken by children thoroughly.
The three judges on the court have a history of opposing abortion rights and are all ardent conservatives. Circuit Judge William Ho claimed he would have taken further action and removed mifepristone from the market.
Instead, most of the panel reversed FDA actions that had recently simplified the procedure for obtaining the medicine. These included legalising its use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy rather than just seven, allowing distribution by mail, lowering the dosage, and only requiring one instead of three in-person doctor appointments.
The verdict will almost certainly be challenged, first by the entirety of the Fifth Circuit and then by the United States Supreme Court, which last year overturned its precedent-setting Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion in every state.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organisation that advocates abortion rights, at least 15 of the 50 states have outright banned abortion since that time, and many more forbid it beyond a particular stage of pregnancy.
For pharmaceutical abortions, which make up more than half of all abortions performed in the United States, mifepristone is a component of a two-drug regimen alongside misoprostol.
According to several medical studies and years of real-world use, the medicine is safe and effective.
Major medical organisations have claimed in court documents that taking mifepristone off the market would damage patients by forcing them to have more intrusive surgical abortions. These organisations include the American College of Obstetricians, Gynaecologists, and the American Medical Association.
Hundreds of executives from pharmaceutical and biotech companies have urged for Kacsmaryk’s decision to be overturned, arguing that it disregards decades of scientific research on the drug’s safety and undercuts the FDA’s authority, potentially causing instability for the sector that depends on the agency.
