CNN
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A group of doctors opposed abortion the Supreme Court asked on Tuesday to restrict access to a key abortion drug while other legal challenges play out as a Wednesday night deadline approaches for the court to act.
The filing means that after the Justice Department files an expected response late Tuesday or early Wednesday, the court could rule at any time as the legal battle over mifepristone continues, nearly two weeks after a federal judge in Texas said the drug it should not have been approved. in 2000.
Last week, Justice Samuel Alito granted a request of the Biden administration and a manufacturer of the drug to put a temporary hold on the decision to give judges more time to review the case. Alito asked to hear from the doctors and said the court would make its final decision Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. ET.
In the filing, the doctors asked the justices to ultimately reject the request from the Biden administration, arguing that “for nearly a quarter of a century” the government and the drug’s maker “willfully flouted applicable law and regulations, ignored loopholes and red flags in their own safety data, willfully avoided judicial review, and continually placed politics above women’s health.”
Erik C. Baptist, an attorney for the doctors, said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had not done enough to study the drug’s safety.
“For decades, the agency has stripped away any meaningful and necessary protections for chemical abortion, demonstrating callous disregard for women’s well-being, unborn life, and statutory limits.”
He said the government’s argument amounted to a “decline argument that compares chemical abortion to drugs like ibuprofen” and that lower court rulings restricting access to the drug were “meticulous decisions” that, he argued, “only require the agency to comply the law. ”