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WASHINGTON, D.C., January 12, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – The U.S. Supreme Court tonight granted the Trump administration’s request for the reinstatement of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) rules requiring an in-person doctor visit before a woman obtains abortion pills.

This action allows the FDA to enforce the in-person requirements for the abortion pill under Mifeprex’s Risk Evaluation Mitigation Strategy (REMS) while litigation continues in the Fourth Circuit Court. The litigation could still end up back at the Supreme Court at a later date to be debated on the merits.

However, the Supreme Court’s ruling is premised on the federal government having the power to decide FDA regulations, and so although the order may save some babies over the next week, it is all but certain that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will suspend or permanently scrap the basic health and safety regulation soon after taking power. 

Under the guise of the coronavirus outbreak, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) and other pro-abortion groups sued the FDA over its regulations that require doctors writing prescriptions for abortion pills see their patients in-person. If abortionists don’t see women in person, there can be a host of complications for the mother as well as the child who is killed.

The abortion pill regimen is designed to kill babies during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, but without seeing the mother in-person for an ultrasound, an abortionist could dispense the pills to women farther along in pregnancy than 10 weeks or who have ectopic pregnancies. This could make the abortion pill more dangerous for the mother than it already is. 

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented. 

“The majority of American women seeking abortion care [sic] during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy rely on medication abortion,” wrote Sotomayor and Kagan in a joint dissent that played up the danger of the coronavirus, citing the Centers for Disease Control. “Medication abortion involves taking two prescription drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, which together induce the equivalent of an early miscarriage.”

Abortion is the deliberate killing of an embryonic or fetal human being whereas miscarriage is his or her natural death.

“Although the COVID–19 pandemic has only worsened since October, the Court now grants the Government’s request,” they lamented. “Due to particularly severe health risks, vastly limited clinic options, and the 10-week window for obtaining a medication abortion, the FDA’s requirement that women obtain mifepristone in person during the COVID–19 pandemic places an unnecessary and undue burden on their right to abortion. Pregnancy itself puts a woman at increased risk for severe consequences from COVID–19. In addition, more than half of women who have abortions are women of color, and COVID–19’s mortality rate is three times higher for Black and Hispanic individuals than non-Hispanic White individuals.”

Chief Justice John Roberts, who has sided with a number of pro-abortion and pro-LGBT rulings, simply wrote, “The question before us is not whether the requirements for dispensing mifepristone impose an undue burden on a woman’s right to an abortion as a general matter. The question is instead whether the District Court properly ordered the Food and Drug Administration to lift those established requirements because of the court’s own evaluation of the impact of the COVID–19 pandemic…I do not see a sufficient basis here for the District Court to compel the FDA to alter the regimen for medical abortion.”

Roberts also wrote that he believes “that courts owe significant deference to the politically accountable entities with the ‘background, competence, and expertise to assess public health,’” referencing South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom. In that ruling, the Supreme Court declined to intervene on behalf of California churches who were being targeted for closure supposedly because of the coronavirus. 

Although the “public health experts” running the FDA right now support the just-reinstated very small restriction on abortion pills, it is highly unlikely the “public health experts” of a Biden regime will feel the same way.