The Road To Gilead, Con't

As expected, the 5th Circuit has sided with US Judge Andrew Kacsmaryk in banning the abortion drug mifepristone from being prescribed or sent by mail, although the SCOTUS hold on that order remains during the appeals process.

 

Access to the abortion pill mifepristone must be restricted, a U.S. appeals court ruled on Wednesday, ordering a ban on telemedicine prescriptions and shipments of the drug by mail, though the order will not immediately take effect.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals stopped short of ruling that the drug must be pulled off the market altogether, as a lower court had done.

Mifepristone's availability remains unchanged for now, following an emergency order from the U.S. Supreme Court in April preserving the status quo during the appeal.


The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the pill, and lawyers for the anti-abortion groups challenging the drug's approval did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The three-judge 5th Circuit panel was reviewing an order in April by U.S. District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas. While it was a preliminary ruling that applied while the case was pending, Kacsmaryk said he was ultimately likely to make it permanent.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit brought by four anti-abortion groups headed by the recently formed Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion doctors who sued in November.

They contend the FDA used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug's safety when used by minors.

All three judges on the panel are staunchly conservative, with a history of opposing abortion rights. One of them, Circuit Judge William Ho, said he would have gone further and pulled mifepristone off the market altogether.

Instead, the majority of the panel rolled back FDA actions that had made the drug easier to access in recent years. Those included allowing distribution by mail, approving its use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven weeks, reducing the dosage and cutting the number of required in-person doctor visits from three to one.

The decision will almost certainly be appealed first to the full 5th Circuit and then to the U.S. Supreme Court, which last year overturned its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized abortion nationwide.

 

We'll see if the appeals make it to SCOTUS in time for June's traditional Removal of the Rights in 2024.

 

And once again, we had one of the three judges on the panel completely agreed with Judge Kacsmaryk that mifeprestone should be removed from the market entirely, which is still lunatic nonsense.

 

I have a notion that SCOTUS doesn't want to deal with this in an election year, ridding the entire country of a safe, effective medical abortion medication for tens of millions of women four months before a presidential election will be catastrophic for the GOP, and everyone knows it.