The US Justice Department on Thursday said it was seeking an emergency response to new restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone after a ruling by a federal appeals court.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland said that his department would file an appeal with the Supreme Court seeking to block the entirety of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's order, which was issued last Friday in Louisiana.
In a statement, Mr Garland said the administration “will be seeking emergency relief from the Supreme Court to defend the FDA's [Food and Drug Administration's] scientific judgment and protect Americans' access to safe and effective reproductive care”.
A panel of three judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, in the southern state of Louisiana, ruled 2-1 to keep mifepristone temporarily available in the US but with tighter restrictions.
Under the new order, access to the drug will also require three visits to physicians during the prescription period, and will be limited to women in the first seven weeks of pregnancy, down from 10.
Mifepristone was approved by the FDA more than two decades ago and is used in more than half the abortions carried out annually in the US.
However, Mr Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former Republican president Donald Trump, last Friday overturned the FDA's approval of the drug.
That ruling was paused for a week to allow an appeal, with Wednesday's judgment extending that pause beyond Friday as the FDA had requested.
The appellate court said its ruling would hold until the case was heard in full. Its tightened regulations reverse restrictions the FDA had eased in 2016.
“We are going to continue to fight in the courts,” said White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre to reporters travelling with President Joe Biden in Ireland. “We believe that the law is on our side, and we will prevail.”
Mr Biden has previously branded Mr Kacsmaryk's ruling as “out of bounds”.
The two circuit court judges who voted to tighten restrictions, Kurt Engelhardt and Andrew Oldham, were also both appointed by Mr Trump.
The third, Catharina Haynes, is an appointee of former president George W Bush.
The latest US stand-off over women's reproductive freedom comes almost a year after the conservative-dominated Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that for half a century had enshrined the constitutional right to abortion.
“This lawsuit is the next step to a nationwide abortion ban,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement on Thursday.
“The decision severely limits access to mifepristone, standing between doctors and their patients.”
She added: “President Biden and our administration remain firmly committed to protecting access to medication abortion, as the President and I have made clear since the day of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs,” referring to Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organisation, a 2022 decision in which the court held that the constitution does not confer a right to abortion.
Some are expressing concern that Mr Kacsmaryk's decision endangers the approval of other medications.
“The Fifth Circuit’s decision — just like the district court’s — second-guesses the agency’s medical experts,” Ms Harris said.
“If this decision stands, no medication — from chemotherapy drugs, to asthma medicine, to blood pressure pills, to insulin — would be safe from attacks.”
Shortly after Mr Kacsmaryk's decision on Friday, a judge in Washington state ruled in a separate case that access to mifepristone must be preserved.
The duelling legal opinions, along with the appeals, mean the issue is almost certain to end up before the Supreme Court.
Polls repeatedly show a clear majority of Americans support continued access to safe abortion, but conservative groups seek to limit what had previously been a right enshrined in law.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
