(TheLastPatriotNews.com) – The United States Supreme Court has put off a much-anticipated decision on the legality of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone until Friday.
On Wednesday, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito extended until 11:59 pm on Friday the temporary administrative stay that he had put earlier on a Texas judge’s ruling blocking the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone, The New York Post reported.
By noon on Tuesday, the deadline set by Alito, abortion opponents had filed 11 briefs against the appeal of the anti-mifepristone ruling, The Daily Caller reported.
Since the FDA approval in 2000 of a two-pill chemical abortion regimen, almost six million women in the United States have used the two drugs – mifepristone and misoprostol – to kill their unborn babies.
The current legal battle over the legality of mifepristone intensified after, on April 7, Texas US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, put on hold the FDA’s approval of the drug.
Hours later, US District Judge Thomas Rice, an Obama appointee, ruled to preserve access to the drug in 17 states where Democrats sued to protect its availability.
The respective legal cases became possible due to the June 2022 ruling of the US Supreme Court, which overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.
The Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals then changed Kacsmaryk’s ruling, allowing mifepristone to be available for sale, though it banned its mail orders and limited it to the first seven weeks of pregnancy.
The Post writes that the FDA “had long established that the drug was safe to use for women who were up to ten weeks pregnant.”
It adds the US Supreme Court is first expected to decide whether the restrictions on mifepristone would be put in force for the duration of the legal case against its 2000 approval by the FDA.
The Biden administration and drug producer Danco Laboratories have urged the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, to kill the restrictions on mifepristone because those would cause chaos for its providers.
“[The lower court’s order would] scramble the regulatory regime governing a drug that FDA determined was safe and effective under the approved conditions and that has been used by more than five million American women over the last two decades,” the FDA wrote in a reply brief that it filed with the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the state of New York said it would stockpile 150,000 doses of misoprostol, the second drug in the chemical abortion regimen. According to experts, the second drug would still cause abortions “safely” even “without mifepristone,” but “the process could take longer.”
Mifepristone is used to kill unborn infants by robbing them of nutrients, while misoprostol causes contractions to “empty the uterus.”
A recent poll conducted before the new legal developments found that 53% of Americans were against bans on abortion pills.
Supreme Court extends stay on abortion pill legality ruling https://t.co/szImtSW4Y1 pic.twitter.com/2ih3R7Dlgt
— New York Post (@nypost) April 19, 2023
