The Supreme Court’s acceptance of an appeal from the Biden administration on Wednesday opens a new front in the national controversy over access to abortion as states, including Texas, have been moving aggressively against women since the high court overturned Roe v. Wade last year.
Fourteen states have outright forbidden abortion and many others have significantly restricted when a pregnancy can be terminated since the June 2022 decision.
Texas, which bans it, also recently blocked a woman from aborting a fetus diagnosed with a fatal genetic condition, even though physicians said continuing the pregnancy could threaten her life and future fertility. (Lawyers for the woman, who was 21 weeks pregnant, said she had already left the state to seek the procedure elsewhere.)
More broadly, these cases demonstrate the new post-Roe world created by the Supreme Court.
The most personal choices of women (with their physicians) are now litigated in courtrooms, alongside new policy dilemmas, such as over government’s approval of mifepristone. Another pending federal dispute tests whether a near total abortion ban (in Idaho) is preempted by a US law that requires hospitals receiving Medicare reimbursement to provide emergency care for needy patients.
The new case accepted by the high court on Wednesday, Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, will determine abortion access and the power of federal regulators to assess the safety and effectiveness of drugs, whether related to abortion or treatment for cancer, epilepsy and other medical conditions.
The case, expected to be heard this spring with a decision likely by July, is destined to be a flashpoint in the 2024 presidential election and political races nationwide. It marks the first test of the justices’ sentiment on abortion since their 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade….
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