5 months ago
23
WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Thursday rejected a bid to
restrict
an
abortion pill
widely used in the United States to terminate pregnancies.
The court, in a unanimous opinion, said the anti-abortion groups and physicians challenging the medication,
mifepristone
, lacked the legal standing to bring the case.
Abortion rights are one of the key issues in the Nov polls and the administration of Democratic Prez Joe Biden had urged the court to maintain access to the drug, which was approved by FDA in 2000.
His opponent Donald Trump leads a Republican Party broadly favouring blocks to
abortion
access.
The mifepristone case was the first significant abortion case heard by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court since it overturned the previously long-held constitutional right to abortion two years ago. "We recognise that many citizens, including the plaintiff doctors here, have sincere concerns about and objections to others using mifepristone and obtaining abortions," said Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the 9-0 opinion. "But citizens and doctors do not have standing to sue simply because others are allowed to engage in certain activities," Kavanaugh said.
The conservative justice said the federal courts were "the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs' concerns about FDA's actions" and they could present their objections through regulatory procedures or through the "political and electoral processes". Abortion opponents have been seeking to restrict nationwide access to the pill, claiming it is unsafe and that anti-abortion doctors were being forced to violate their conscience by intervening on patients who suffered complications after using it.
Medication abortion accounted for 63% of the abortions in the country last year, up from 53% in 2020, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Some 20 states have banned or restricted abortion since the SC in June 2022 overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion for half a century. AP
