It’s been a challenging week. As counsel for freestanding abortion providers in Pennsylvania, WLP attorneys have been working around the clock to protect Pennsylvanians and beyond from anti-abortion overreach.
Here’s what’s going on.
First, the bottom line: As WLP interim co-executive director Susan J. Frietsche explained on CBS News, both in-clinic and medication abortion are still legal, and available in Pennsylvania, and will remain legal and available in the foreseeable future.
Last Friday night, two federal judges in different districts issued two conflicting rulings concerning the availability of mifepristone, the first of two medicines taken in the most common medication abortion protocol.
Mifepristone has a stellar safety record and is also used to treat ectopic pregnancy, severe pregnancy complications, endometriosis, PTSD, and brain tumors, among other conditions.
Nonetheless, anti-abortion groups filed litigation in Texas as a strategy to reach into abortion-legal states and deprive pregnant people living in those states of access to mifepristone against our will and despite our state laws. The unprecedented ruling from the Texas federal court judge initially suspended the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone with the caveat that the order would not take effect for seven days to give the defendants time to appeal.
A few days later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit narrowed the scope of that Texas ruling. The appeals court reversed the Texas district court’s suspension of the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, but re-installed medically unnecessary restrictions that would, if allowed to go into effect, make abortion harder to access, less private, and more expensive in states governed by that ruling.
Nothing in this ruling will take effect in Pennsylvania for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile, a conflicting ruling was issued out of a federal court in Washington State in litigation filed by 17 states, including Pennsylvania, and the District of Columbia. The federal judge in the Washington case ordered the FDA to keep the status quo in plaintiff states, effectively protecting plaintiff states from the overreach of the Texas decision.
Pennsylvania is a plaintiff state in the Washington case and therefore is protected for the time being.
What Happens Next
The Texas ruling, as modified by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, was scheduled to go into effect at 12:01 AM Saturday, April 15.
However, the U.S. Department of Justice has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the Texas order from taking effect. Late afternoon on Friday April 14, U.S. Supreme Court Circuit Justice Samuel Alito issued an administrative stay, temporarily suspending the Texas ruling until midnight on Wednesday April 19.
The situation is fluid and changing every day as a result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. What will not change is that we are working to protect Pennsylvanians from anti-abortion over-reach and will continue to keep you updated.
We’ll keep you posted and please follow us on twitter if you are not already.
If you have questions about accessing abortion in Pennsylvania, call 412-281-2892 to leave a confidential message for a Women’s Law Project attorney, or email us at info@womenslawproject.org.
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Women’s Law Project is a non-profit public interest law center in Pennsylvania devoted to advancing and defending the rights of women, girls, and LGBTQ+ people in Pennsylvania and beyond.
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