Vice President Kamala Harris has found herself as the administration’s leading voice on protecting reproductive rights in the face of a judge’s ruling against a popular abortion drug and a Florida ban on the procedure after six weeks of pregnancy. Harris urged Americans to take action during “a critical point in our nation’s history” as thousands of protesters demonstrated across the country against new limits to abortion rights making their way through the courts. The Associated Press has the story:
Harris rallies as SCOUT to rule on abortion pill
Newslooks- LOS ANGELES (AP)
Vice President Kamala Harris urged Americans to take action during “a critical point in our nation’s history” as thousands of protesters demonstrated across the country against new limits to abortion rights making their way through the courts.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s actions to delay rule changes that would have limited the way the abortion drug mifepristone could be used and dispensed. The limits were paused while the court reviews the case more thoroughly.
Harris made a surprise stop in Los Angeles at one of the rallies, where she called the latest upheaval over abortion rights a further incursion by conservatives into myriad “fundamental rights” many Americans thought they had.
“And so this is a moment that history will show required each of us — based on our collective love of our country — to stand up, and fight for, and protect our ideals. That’s what this moment is,” she said Saturday, speaking to several hundred demonstrators from the steps of City Hall. “When you attack the rights of women in America, you are attacking America.”
The Supreme Court is deciding whether women will face restrictions in getting a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, while a lawsuit continues. The justices are expected to issue an order on Wednesday in a fast-moving case from Texas in which abortion opponents are seeking to roll back Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, mifepristone.
The drug first won FDA approval in 2000, and conditions on its use have been loosened in recent years, including making it available by mail in states that allow access.
The Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, the maker of the drug, want the nation’s highest court to reject limits on mifepristone’s use imposed by lower courts, at least as long as the legal case makes it way through the courts. They say women who want the drug and providers who dispense it will face chaos if limits on the drug take effect. Depending on what the justices decide, that could include requiring women to take a higher dosage of the drug than the FDA says is necessary.
Alliance Defending Freedom, representing anti-abortion doctors and medical groups in a challenge to the drug, is defending the rulings in calling on the Supreme Court to let the restrictions take effect now.
The legal fight over abortion comes less than a year after conservative justices reversed Roe v. Wade and allowed more than a dozen states to effectively ban abortion outright.
Even as the abortion landscape changed dramatically in several states, abortion opponents set their sights on medication abortions, which make up more than half of all abortions in the United States.
The abortion opponents filed suit in November in Amarillo, Texas. The legal challenge quickly reached the Supreme Court after a federal judge issued a ruling on April 7 that would revoke FDA approval of mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortions.
Less than a week later, a federal appeals court modified the ruling so that mifepristone would remain available while the case continues, but with limits. The appeals court said that the drug can’t be mailed or dispensed as a generic and that patients who seek it need to make three in-person visits with a doctor, among other things.
The generic version of mifepristone makes up two-thirds of the supply in the United States, its manufacturer, Las Vegas-based GenBioPro Inc., wrote in a court filing that underscored the perils of allowing the restrictions to be put into effect.
The court also said the drug should only be approved through seven weeks of pregnancy for now, even though the FDA since 2016 has endorsed its use through 10 weeks of pregnancy.
Complicating the situation, a federal judge in Washington has ordered the FDA to preserve access to mifepristone under the current rules in 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia that filed a separate lawsuit.
The Biden administration has said the rulings conflict and create an untenable situation for the FDA.
In an order issued last Friday by Justice Samuel Alito, the court put the restrictions on hold through Wednesday to give the court time to consider the emergency appeal.
If the justices aren’t inclined to block the ruling from taking effect for now, the Democratic administration and Danco have a fallback argument, asking the court to take up the challenge to mifepristone, hear arguments and decide the case by early summer.
The court only rarely takes such a step before at least one appeals court has thoroughly examined the legal issues involved.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans already has ordered an accelerated schedule for hearing the case, with arguments set for May 17.
Mifepristone has been available for use in medication abortions in the United States since the FDA granted approval in 2000. Since then, more than 5 million women have used it, along with another drug, misoprostol, to induce abortions.
Some of the protesters voiced their anger at the steps of the nation’s high court, which took Friday’s action at the request of the federal Justice Department. The agency asked the high court to lift restrictions on mifepristone imposed by an appellate court in Texas earlier in the week. The decision by the appellate court reduced the window of time when the drug could be used and prevented the drug from being dispensed by mail.
Critics of the Texas and appellate court decisions, including pharmaceutical companies, viewed the courts’ actions as a dangerous intrusion into the authority of the FDA, which regulates how medications are sold and used in the United States.
Demonstrators in New York City stood behind a sign with a four-letter expletive directed at Texas, where a federal judge set off the latest salvo in the battle over abortion. They held signs urging the government to defend medication abortions.
But the crowd was modest, attracting a little more than 100 people outside the picturesque public library along Fifth Avenue.
Still, the demonstrators attracted looks from passersby along the busy thoroughfare, some briefly joining the group to lend their voices.
“It can be hard to get people out, because people are being bombarded with all kinds of assaults on their bodies and people are tired and poor,” said Viva Ruiz, who said she helped organize the rally.
“The news cycle is so fast that when one thing happens something terrible happens the next day. So it’s hard to sustain the momentum or the energy for people to be on the streets,” Ruiz said.
With few exceptions, many of the rallies — organized under the banner of a group calling itself “Bigger than Roe” — were held in smaller cities.
Since last year’s reversal of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized the right to an abortion, more than a dozen states have effectively outlawed abortion, while additional states have moved to further tighten abortion laws.
On Thursday, the GOP-dominated Florida Legislature moved to became the latest state to ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
Restrictions on the delivery and use of mifepristone, part of a two-drug regimen to end a pregnancy, would be a further blow to abortion rights advocates. The other drug, misoprostol, can be used on its own, but doing so is less effective than using both drugs in combination.
When mifepristone was initially approved, the FDA limited its use to up to seven weeks of pregnancy. It also required three in-person office visits: the first to administer mifepristone, the next to administer the second drug, misoprostol, and the third to address any complications.
If the appeals court’s action stands, those would again be the terms under which mifepristone could be dispensed.
States that support abortion rights, including California and New York, have begun stockpiling misoprostol to assure their states have adequate supplies. Washington state is among those stockpiling a supply of mifepristone or its generic form. And Massachusetts Democratic Gov. Maura Healey said the administration is dedicating $1 million to help providers contracted with the Department of Public Health buy additional quantities of mifepristone.
More than 5.6 million women in the U.S. had used mifepristone as of June 2022, according to the FDA. In that period, the agency received 4,200 reports of complications in women, or less than one-tenth of 1% of women who took the drug.
