Anti-abortion groups urge US Supreme Court to restrict abortion pill

 The U.S. Supreme Court should restrict the availability of the abortion pill mifepristone, anti-abortion groups challenging the medication's federal regulatory approval told the justices in a filing on Tuesday, urging them to implement curbs ordered by a conservative federal judge in Texas.

The challengers urged the Supreme Court to reject emergency requests by Democratic President Joe Biden's administration and the pill's manufacturer to halt the April 7 preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo that would greatly limit mifepristone's distribution, while litigation proceeds.

The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on April 12 declined to block the restrictions but halted a part of Kacsmaryk's order that would have suspended the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the drug that was given in 2000, effectively pulling it off the market. The FDA is the U.S. agency that signs off on the safety of food products, drugs and medical devices.

"The only effect of the lower court's order is to restore a modicum of safety for the women and girls who use the drug, including supervision and oversight by a physician," attorneys at the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious rights group representing the pill's challengers, wrote in the filing.

The FDA and Danco Laboratories have for years disregarded "holes and red flags" in their safety data, "demonstrating callous disregard for women's well-being, unborn life, and statutory limits," they added.

The FDA asserts that mifepristone is safe and effective, a record that it has said is conclusively demonstrated over decades of use by millions of Americans and that adverse effects of mifepristone are exceedingly rare.

The case poses another major threat to abortion rights in the United States in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision last June to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had legalized the procedure nationwide. Mounting abortion bans and restrictions have been enacted by Republican-led states since then.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/anti-abortion-groups-urge-us-161512993.html