Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Appeals Court Upholds Access To Abortion Pill For Now, But Narrows Use
The New York Times: Appeals Court Says Abortion Pill Can Remain Available But Imposes Temporary Restrictions
A federal appeals court ruled late Wednesday that the abortion pill mifepristone could remain available, but the judges blocked the drug from being sent to patients through the mail and rolled back other steps the government had taken to ease access in recent years. The three-judge panel said its ruling would hold until the full case is heard on appeal. (Belluck, 4/13)
Reuters: US Appeals Court Preserves Limited Access To Abortion Pill
Wednesday's ruling came from a panel of three 5th Circuit judges, two appointed by then-President Donald Trump and one by George W. Bush, both Republicans. Judge Catharina Haynes, the Bush appointee, partly dissented, saying she would have temporarily blocked Kacsmaryk's order entirely. The emergency stay is meant to remain in place until the 5th Circuit can hear the Biden administration's appeal of Kacsmaryk's order more fully. That appeal may be heard by a different panel. (Pierson, 4/13)
In related news —
ABC News: With Mifepristone In Limbo, Harris Reaffirms White House Commitment To Abortion Access
With Americans' access to the abortion pill mifepristone still in limbo, Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday convened a meeting of a White House task force on reproductive health care during which Cabinet officials expanded on a new way they intend to protect a person's privacy when it comes to abortion access. The meeting fell just hours after the Department of Health and Human Services announced it had drafted a new federal rule intended to make clear to doctors and other medical professionals that divulging details of a person getting an abortion violates the privacy law HIPAA. (Cathey, 4/12)
Also —
The New York Times: Inside The Online Market For Abortion Pills
A few times each month, a 10” x 15” padded FedEx envelope arrives in Mark’s mailbox in eastern Florida. He doesn’t know when the packages will arrive, only that each shipment usually contains about a dozen individual mifepristone pills and several 10-packs of misoprostol, the two drugs used in a medication abortion. He repackages the pills — one mifepristone and four misoprostol each — and then prints a one-page sheet of instructions before shipping the medication to U.S. customers who have placed orders from medside24.com, a website based in Kazakhstan that sells abortion pills exclusively. (McCann, 4/13)
ABC News: Unprecedented Texas Abortion Pill Ruling Sparks Debate About 'Judge Shopping'
An unprecedented ruling by a single federal judge in Texas on mifepristone is raising concerns of "judge shopping" in a legal clash that could reshape abortion access in the U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, in his April 7 order, ruled to suspend the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion pill. In his order, Kacsmaryk the drug -- which has been on the market for 23 years -- is unsafe and its approval process was rushed. (Hutzler, 4/12)
Axios: Why A 19th-Century Law Is At Center Of Abortion Pill Fight
In the post-Roe era, conservatives have seized on the long-dormant Comstock Act against medication abortion — with a high-profile case involving it potentially headed to the Supreme Court. The law isn't "a slam dunk," in court, Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California at Davis, told Axios, but "there's an argument you could make that a court that's conservative enough may buy," she said. (Doherty, 4/12)
Vox: Anthony Comstock, The Anti-Abortion Movement’s New Hero, Explained
The Comstock Act, an 1873 federal law signed by President Ulysses S. Grant, is a relic of an era when free speech, medical privacy, and other rights that modern-day Americans take for granted effectively did not exist. Nearly every word of this law, which is named after the Gilded Age anti-sex crusader Anthony Comstock, is unconstitutional — at least under the understanding of the Constitution that prevailed for nearly all of the past 60 years. The Comstock Act purports to make it a crime to mail “every obscene, lewd, lascivious, indecent, filthy or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance,” or to mail any “thing” for “any indecent or immoral purpose” — vague words that inspired a century of litigation just to determine what concepts like “obscenity” actually mean. (Millhiser, 4/12)
