Reuters

Washington

The US Supreme Court yesterday left intact a state court decision invalidating an Oklahoma law that effectively banned the so-called abortion pill RU-486, with the justices deciding to sidestep a potentially contentious case.

The high court had been waiting for the Oklahoma Supreme Court to clarify a December 2012 ruling that had voided the law before deciding on whether to rule on the case. Last week, the state court issued a new opinion explaining its reasoning in more detail.

The US high court’s latest action means the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling is final. The state court said the effect of the law would have been a ban on all abortions by medications, and as a result “restricts the long-respected medical discretion of physicians” who decide that method is safer for some patients than surgical abortion.

That ruling invalidated a state law it said had the effect of banning abortion-inducing drugs altogether.

The group Center for Reproductive Rights, which had challenged the law, said the Supreme Court’s action means that women in Oklahoma will now have access to drug-induced abortions in addition to non-surgical treatment of ectopic pregnancies in which an embryo implants outside the uterus.

“The Supreme Court has let stand a strong decision by the Oklahoma Supreme Court that recognised this law for what it is: an outright ban on a safe method of ending a pregnancy in its earliest stages, and an unconstitutional attack on women’s health and rights,” the group’s president, Nancy Northup, said in a statement.

By declining yesterday to hear the case, the high court signalled that while it will not shy away from reviewing abortion regulations in some instances, it has no appetite to revisit earlier contentious decisions on the right to abortion in general terms.

The Oklahoma court said in its first ruling on the law that the measure violated a 1992 US Supreme Court ruling that set the standard for how courts should weigh abortion restrictions.

The 2011 Oklahoma law prevented doctors from “off-label” use of the drug mifepristone, also known as the “abortion pill.” It is sold by Danco Laboratories as Mifeprex, which is used with other medications to induce abortion up to seven weeks into a pregnancy.

The drug was approved by the FDA in 2000 subject to the instructions contained on the label.

The “off-label” use prohibited by the law developed later and allowed less physician oversight when the drug is used.