Officials with President Biden’s reelection campaign on Monday portrayed a pending Supreme Court case over nationwide access to the abortion pill as an example of the extreme limits that former President Donald Trump would place on reproductive health care if elected in November.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat who is a Biden-Harris campaign advisory board member, said Mr. Trump “and MAGA Republicans are prepared to use every tool in their toolbox to control women’s bodies – banning abortion nationwide, ending access to IVF, and even attacking contraception access.”
“We’ve seen what happens when Donald Trump and extremists get their way: 10-year-old rape survivors are forced to travel across state lines for care,” Ms. Warren told reporters. “Mothers, hoping for a baby, heartbroken when the pregnancy goes wrong, turned away from the emergency room and forced to wait until they are at the brink of death while doctors are barred from helping.
“Make no mistake, abortion is on the ballot in 2024,” she said.
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear a legal battle over the Food and Drug Administration’s changes to the distribution of Mifepristone, which is used with misoprostol to terminate a pregnancy.
The FDA moved in 2021 to eliminate the number of in-person doctor visits needed to obtain the drug and also allow it to be used longer into pregnancy, from seven weeks to 10 weeks. The change in the gestational period was adopted in 2016.
The case is one of the most closely watched battles from the Justice Department, which appealed a lower court ruling restricting the use of mifepristone.
The legal battle was originally brought by a group of pro-life medical providers represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a religious liberty legal group. The providers say they have seen women harmed by taking the drug.
The feds, though, say the drug has been used throughout five presidential administrations and more than half of American women who choose to end pregnancies use mifepristone.
It will be the next major abortion battle, following the high court’s ruling two years ago that did away with Roe v. Wade. Mr. Trump has taken credit for that decision, noting that he appointed three conservative justices who were in the majority for overturning Roe.
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority sent the issue back to the states, and since then, several conservative states have moved to strictly limit or outright ban the procedure.
Biden-Harris Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez said if reelected, former President Trump and congressional Republicans would attempt to further limit abortion.
“The president and vice president are the only candidates who believe that reproductive health care decisions belong to women and their doctors – not politicians or the government. These are the stakes in 2024 and we’re going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows it,” she said.
Mr. Trump suggested last week that he would support a national ban on abortions around 15 weeks of pregnancy. In a radio interview, he criticized Democrats for not endorsing such a ban that would limit abortions in states that still allow the procedure.
According to a Harvard-Harris poll released last week, abortion was in the top five issues for voters.
In the abortion pill case, the administration argues that the group of medical providers lacks standing to bring the lawsuit, saying their injuries are “speculative and attenuated.”
A district court ruled the pill should not have had FDA approval at all, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not go that far. Instead, the appeals panel said the drug could still be dispensed but not through the mail as regulators had begun to allow, and only up to seven weeks into pregnancy.
The justices will consider how long the pill can be prescribed during pregnancy and whether it can be mailed as federal officials had proposed in recent administrative changes.
However, the high court rejected another case from the same group of pro-life doctors who asked the justices to review the pill’s initial FDA approval during the Clinton administration.
The drug was approved in 2000 for up to seven weeks of pregnancy, but its administration required three steps: first, a visit with a doctor to receive mifepristone, then another one to get the drug misoprostol, and finally a follow-up to address complications.
The pill has remained available during the appellate process after the Supreme Court placed the lower court ruling on hold.
Danco Laboratories, a producer of mifepristone, petitioned the high court over its production of the pill, challenging the lower court’s restrictions on its distribution.
In its court filing, Danco Laboratories’ lawyers say the suggestion that more women need emergency care after the FDA did away with in-person doctor visits isn’t supported by facts.
The cases are FDA v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and Danco Laboratories LLC v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine.
A decision in the abortion pill legal battle is expected by the end of June.