US abortion providers relieved but wary as Supreme Court preserves access to pills

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By Sharon Bernstein

(RockedBuzz via Reuters) – Abortion-rights advocates expressed relief on Friday after the US Supreme Court preserved access to a widely used abortion pill, but warned of a long battle ahead as the legal challenge against the drug.

The court’s move to halt new drug restrictions set by lower courts was welcome news less than a year after its conservative majority overturned abortion access in the United States by overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade’s 1973 legalization of abortion nationwide.

Abortion providers were either stockpiling the mifepristone abortion pill or planning to switch to a new regimen amid the battle over the legality of a drug used in more than half of U.S. abortions.

Several providers said late Friday that they will suspend plans to change their medical abortion protocol in light of the Supreme Court order.

“It’s the right decision and a huge relief,” said Joshua Sharfstein, a public health professor at Johns Hopkins University and a former FDA official. “The alternative would not only have undermined access to reproductive health care, it would have thrown drug regulation in the United States into disarray.”

Friday’s order will allow mifepristone to remain available without new restrictions as a court battle unfolds that could take months or longer.

However, the Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits of the case, meaning mifepristone could still be restricted or banned at a later stage of the case.

Opponents of abortion said Friday they were confident the court would eventually rule in favor of the pill challengers, who argue the FDA illegally approved mifepristone and then removed critical safeguards on what they call a dangerous drug .

“What the courts will see is a drug that doesn’t cure a disease or relieve the symptoms of a disease,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life. “It was developed to take the life of an unborn child and always has the potential to harm the mother.”

Several states where abortion remains legal, including California, Massachusetts and Washington, previously said they began stockpiling abortion drugs ahead of possible restrictions. Some Planned Parenthood clinics have also claimed to have accumulated at least a year’s worth of mifepristone.

California and other liberal states have pledged to protect pharmacists who continue to dispense mifepristone when prescribed by doctors, even if FDA approval is withdrawn.

Mifepristone is taken with another drug called misoprostol to perform medical abortion in the US

Nicole Erwin, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates and Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest, Hawaii, Alaska, Indiana and Kentucky, said there was no longer an immediate reason to switch to a single-drug regimen using only misoprostol.

“The court ruled that access to mifepristone should remain unchanged as the case moves through the lower courts, meaning there is no need to deviate from the current two-pill regimen,” he said.

But reproductive rights advocates said they remain concerned about future access risks as the case goes back to lower courts that had sought to restrict it.

“We’re still planning to stockpile both mifepristone and misoprostol just in case,” said Josie Urbina, a complex pregnancy physician at the University of California, San Francisco, Center for Pregnancy Options.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein; Additional reporting by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Kim Coghill)

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