The U.S. Supreme Court announced Wednesday that it would consider the issue of the abortion pill, which is used in more than half of all abortions in the U.S. and is the subject of a heated legal battle.
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The Supreme Court must rule on an appeals court decision that reinstated restrictions on the use of the abortion pill that could apply to all American states, but which have been suspended for now.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court is expected to examine the case in the coming months and make a decision by the end of its annual session in June.
Democratic President Joe Biden quickly made clear in a statement from the White House that he was “firmly committed” to defending abortion access in the United States.
If the appeals court decision is upheld in August in New Orleans, it would notably entail a return to a maximum limit of seven instead of ten weeks of pregnancy to benefit from an abortion, a ban on sending the abortion pill by post and the reintroduction of the Obligation to prescribe exclusively by a doctor.
The issue is one of access to mifepristone (RU 486), which has been taken in combination with another pill by 5.6 million women since its approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000. In April, a federal judge in Texas blocked access to mifepristone.
On June 24, 2022, the conservative-majority Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, who guaranteed American women's right to abortion since 1973 and gave each state the freedom to legislate on the matter.
Since then, the country has been divided between the twenty states that have banned or severely restricted access to abortion, mostly in the south and center of the country, and those on the coasts that have introduced new guarantees.
The abortion pill issue is the most important abortion case to be heard by the Supreme Court since its historic decision in June 2022.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a specialist in the field, more than half of abortions (53%) in the United States in 2020 were medical in nature. All experts emphasize that abortions with mifepristone and misoprostol are very safe and effective within the approved time frame.
In the USA, this method has been approved by the United States Medicines Agency (FDA) since 2000.