the legal battle over the abortion pill mythopristone is far from over after a U.S Supreme Court decision on Friday temporarily blocked a ruling that set restrictions on access to the medication only though until this Wednesday April 19th at midnight the high court instructed responses need to be filed by noon tomorrow all of it of course stemming from a Texas Federal judge's decision to suspend the fda's approval of the drug which is widely used in medication abortions the future of access to mifa pristone remains uncertain joining me though to explain where the case goes from here is Kimberly mutcherson coding and professor of law at Rutgers Camden Law School Dean mutterson let me just break this down very simply in my first question what was Friday's scotus ruling the Block in response to so the block on Friday was in response to the opinion from the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and the fifth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion was in response to the district court in Texas um and the injunction that they had put into place so basically what happened was a series of dominoes where we got the opinion from the district court in Texas and the district court said but I'm going to stay my opinion for seven days so that the parties can appeal which they did to the fifth circuit the fifth circuit then issued an opinion also State its opinion its order in order to allow the parties to appeal to the Supreme Court and then it went to the Supreme Court Justice Alito sitting alone right is the one who stated and now it's going to have to be heard by the entire Supreme Court yeah and so they have until basically end of day Wednesday for miffiperstone to be status quo availability wise what happens after Wednesday well we'll have to see what the court says um so the thing that I think is really important for people to keep in mind here is everything that is happening here is just a bunch of civil procedures so anybody who's a civil procedure Professor is very excited by all the things that are happening here because essentially what's happening is these courts are making decisions about what the status of Memphis Stone is going to be during the pendency of proceeding so there have been no merits decisions here at all there haven't been full hearings like none of that has happened yet um so we're going to get in front of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court essentially is going to have to decide well while this proceeding is going on because we haven't even had a full trial yet while this proceeding is going on what is the status of Memphis going to be in the United States does this raise questions just about the power of the federal government the fact that this case is even at this point and and is here um it's it's pretty extraordinary right I mean this is a drug as you know folks have been saying this is a drug that was approved um well over 20 years ago um it was approved in Europe long before it was approved here in the United States there is lots of safety data about Memphis so the idea that we are reopening the fda's decision making so long after the initial approval um is really quite shocking um and it raises serious questions about the power of the FDA about who gets to decide which what drugs are safe and efficacious for Americans to take and the relationship between the courts and federal agencies we've talked to um you know abortion providers Physicians pharmacists just about how they're handling this and essentially the liability that it places on them what does it mean for someone who is awaiting this prescription and what's it going to mean in this next week there's just so much confusion I think in the public so for right now it means everything is status quo as you said before right so if you are a person who is dispensing nifepristone if you are a person who is getting a prescription for methopristone you should you will still be able to do that at least for now um and then on Wednesday we'll see what we get from the Supreme Court um I am sort of past the point of making guesses about what we're going to get from this supreme court I feel like it's just not a wise bet um anymore but I do think that this is a case where the issues are so much bigger than just access to this particular drug as you said there are serious issues here about federal agencies about what their power is about the power of the courts to review Decisions by those federal agencies so there's a lot on the line here that goes far beyond abortion uh Kim Mutterson co-dean professor at Rutgers University Camden School of Law thank you so very much for your Insight thank you [Music]