The United States’ Supreme Court on Friday temporarily blocked a lower court ruling placing restrictions on a widely-used abortion pill in the country, reported the Associated Press.
The Supreme Court ruling means that people can continue to access the drug, mifepristone, while a lawsuit is pending.
Women who seek to end their pregnancies in the first ten weeks without surgical abortion can take mifepristone, along with a second drug named misoprostol.
The US Department of Justice and New York-based Danco Laboratories – maker of the drug mifepristone – had moved the Supreme Court court challenging an April 7 order issued by a district judge in Texas, reported Reuters.
The district judge passed the order in response to a petition by Alliance Defending Freedom, an organisation representing anti-abortion activists. The organisation had challenged the Food and Drug Administration’s approval granted to mifepristone.
The Texas district judge’s order would have rolled back action by the Food and Drug Administration to allow the distribution of mifepristone by mail, and to allow its use up to ten weeks of pregnancy instead of seven weeks.
US President Joe Biden welcomed Friday’s order by the Supreme Court. “I’ll continue to fight attacks on women’s health,” Biden said. “The American people must also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v Wade.”
Access to safe abortions in the United States has become more difficult after the Supreme Court on June 24 overturned the landmark 1973 Roe versus Wade ruling that had made pregnancy termination a constitutional right.
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