NRL News
202.626.8824
dadandrusk@aol.com

Ninth Circuit grants Planned Parenthood request to temporarily enjoin Arizona from enforcing regulations governing how RU-486 may be administered

Apr 2, 2014

 

By Dave Andrusko

Editor’s note. As we were about to send out our final post for Wednesday, we learned that Planned Parenthood had struck again. The following updates an NRL News Today story that appeared earlier today.

Reuters is reporting that the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued a preliminary injunction that temporarily blocks Arizona from enforcing regulations that require abortionists to adhere to FDA standards for administering the two-drug RU-486 abortion technique while Planned Parenthood Arizona seeks to overturn HB 2036 in court.

Federal Judge David C. Bury had upheld the 2012 law just last Monday.
____________

U.S. District Court Judge David Bury

U.S. District Court Judge David Bury

“Arizona women should not be denied their constitutional rights or their ability to get critical health care from the medical professionals they trust while this unconstitutional law continues to make its way through the courts,” said David Brown, staff attorney with the CRR. “We are confident that the Ninth Circuit will do what the lower court’s ruling failed to do: protect women’s rights and health by preserving the same safe and legal access to non-surgical abortion that Arizona women have had for over a decade.”

The chemical abortion regulations were issued by the Arizona Department of Health Services on January 27, under the authority of a law signed by Governor Jan Brewer. They took effect Tuesday.

Arizona’s HB 2036 says that any abortion-inducing drugs must be administered “in compliance with the protocol authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” In 2000, the FDA approved RU-486 for use only for the first seven weeks of pregnancy.

Under the FDA protocol, the woman first takes mifepristone which kills the baby, and then on day three later takes misoprostol, a prostaglandin, which induces labor. Both are to be provided by or under the supervision of a physician.

The plaintiffs want the period the combination can be used extended to nine weeks and for the woman to take the second drug at home. They told Judge Bury that the limitation would affect 800 women who take the combination after the seventh week and before the tenth week of pregnancy. They argued that the two-drug combination of mifepristone and misoprostol has been used safely and to limit their use to seven weeks is “an unconstitutional burden on their right to choose an abortion.”

But harkening back to Supreme Court precedents, Judge Bury held that HB 2036 did not place an “undue burden” on the right to abort or place a “substantial obstacle” in the exercise of that right. For a full account of Judge Bury’s 14-page decision, go to nrlc.cc/1j0ARhH.

Federal courts have upheld similar but not identical protocols in Ohio and Texas. (See nrlc.cc/1hw7hB7 and nrlc.cc/1mwrasc).

Please join those who are following me on Twitter at twitter.com/daveha. Send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.

Categories: Legislation RU486