Abortion foes urge justices to allow limits on abortion drug

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for anti-abortion doctors on Tuesday urged the Supreme Court to allow restrictions to take effect on a drug used in the most common method of abortion in the United States, while a lawsuit continues.

The justices are weighing a request from the Biden administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, maker of the drug mifepristone, to keep on hold lower-court rulings restricting mifepristone's use. The high court is expected to act in the fast-moving case from Texas by late Wednesday.

Alliance Defending Freedom, representing doctors and medical groups in a challenge to Food and Drug Administration approval of the drug, argued in a court filing that the FDA "has stripped away every meaningful and necessary safeguard on chemical abortion, demonstrating callous disregard for women’s well-being, unborn life, and statutory limits."

The legal brief by the anti-abortion doctors called particular attention to what it termed “mail-order abortion,” recent changes that allow women to obtain mifepristone by mail, without an in-person visit with a doctor.