PHOENIX — A new U.S. Supreme Court ruling Monday could eventually affect a year-old Arizona law restricting the use of an abortion-inducing drug.
In a brief order, the justices rejected a bid by abortion foes to reinstate an Oklahoma law that allows RU-486 to be used only in a manner approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.
The order means an Oklahoma Supreme Court ruling the statute is “facially unconstitutional” stands.
Monday’s ruling comes a year after Arizona legislators approved a nearly identical provision as part of a much broader set of restrictions on abortion.
Kate Bernyk of the Center for Reproductive Rights, whose organization represents those who challenged the Oklahoma law, said attorneys are aware of the Arizona statute. But she said no decision has been made whether to challenge the law here.
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Part of that, she said, is because Arizona lawmakers, while approving the restriction in 2012, gave state health officials until this coming August to come up with rules on how to implement the law. She said center wants to examine those rules and determine if they will impose an unconstitutional restriction on the right of women to terminate their pregnancies.
The Arizona law was pushed by the Center for Arizona Policy.
Josh Kredit, legal counsel for the Center for Arizona Policy, said the FDA approved RU-486 to terminate pregnancies under special restrictions, including a restriction it was not to be used beyond the seventh week of pregnancy.
But he said doctors, both in Oklahoma and Arizona, developed nonapproved protocols for using the drug up to nine weeks.
“As it went along, the risk went up and the ability to effectively terminate the pregnancy went down,” Kredit said. So the law was changed, here and elsewhere, to prohibit doctors from making their own decisions about using the drug outside FDA restrictions.
The Oklahoma case is a bit unusual because the Supreme Court agreed to hear from those who argued that legislators did nothing wrong by enacting the restriction.
It was only later the justices asked the Oklahoma high court to clarify whether it saw the law as restricting abortions — which is permissible in some cases — or effectively banning them. When the Oklahoma court said it read the law as an unconstitutional a ban, the Supreme Court opted not to hear the case.
