By Tierney Sneed, CNN
(CNN) — A federal appeals court temporarily reinstated a nationwide requirement that abortion pills be obtained in person, undermining access to the method of abortion that has only grown more widespread since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Friday’s ruling from the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals is a major victory in the anti-abortion movement’s war against medication abortion, which now accounts for roughly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.
The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed by Louisiana last year against the US Food and Drug Administration, after President Donald Trump’s administration refused to act on calls to reinstate the in-person dispensing requirement for abortion pills through the regulatory process.
The opinion was written by Trump-appointed Circuit Judge Kyle Duncan, and joined Circuit Judges Leslie Southwick and Kurt Engelhardt, who were appointed by President George W. Bush and Trump, respectively.
Referring to Louisiana abortion prohibitions, they wrote that the current federal regulations create “an effective way for an out-of-state prescriber to place the drug in the hands of Louisianans in defiance of Louisiana law.”
Since the Covid-19 pandemic, abortion-seekers have been able to obtain mifepristone – one of the two drugs in the medication abortion regimen – through telehealth appointments. President Joe Biden’s administration finalized rules that ended the requirement that the pills be obtained through an in-person doctor’s visit in 2023, after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe precedent protecting abortion rights nationwide.
Louisiana alleged that regulatory maneuver was aimed at undermining the abortion ban that went into effect in the state with the reversal of Roe and says that now hundreds of abortions are occurring every year within its borders because women are able to obtain pills via telehealth visits with providers.
“Every abortion facilitated by FDA’s action cancels Louisiana’s ban on medical abortions and undermines its policy that ‘every unborn child is human being from the moment of conception and is, therefore, a legal person,’” the appeals court wrote Friday.
The ruling is the latest development in a yearslong legal battle over access to abortion pills. The issue reached the Supreme Court two years ago, in a case where the justices ruled that anti-abortion doctors lacked standing to challenging the regulations.
A CNN analysis of mifepristone that years of data show the drug is overwhelmingly safe and has fewer reported side effects than Viagra or penicillin. Mifepristone is also safer than procedural abortions, which are banned or heavily restricted in more than a dozen states.
“This decision defies clear science and settled law and advances an anti-abortion agenda that is deeply unpopular with the American people,” Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney for the Reproductive Freedom Project of the ACLU said in a statement. “For countless people, especially those who live in rural areas, face intimate partner violence, or live with disabilities, losing a telemedicine option will mean losing access to this vital medication altogether.”
In other cases, several other states with anti-abortion laws are making claims similar to Louisiana’s. Joining Louisiana as a plaintiff in the lawsuit against the FDA is a woman who alleges she was coerced into terminating a pregnancy by taking abortion pills that were shipped in from out of state.
Previously, the judge overseeing the case expressed sympathy with Louisiana’s arguments but declined to issue a preliminary order reversing the regulations. US District Judge David Joseph had instead granted a Trump administration request to put the case on hold while the FDA does its own review of the current mifepristone regulations.
The Trump administration had stopped short of defending the FDA’s regulatory approach to the mifepristone on the merits, but it argued that Louisiana’s lawsuit suffered procedural defects that warranted ruling against the state. The 5th Circuit rejected those arguments, and the arguments of two mifepristone manufacturers that intervened in the case to put up a full-throated defense of the rules that made abortion pills easier to obtain.
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