Department of Justice asks to pause ruling against the abortion pill in the US, which would limit its availability

() — The Justice Department asked a federal appeals court on Monday to put on hold a judge’s ruling against the abortion pill in the US, which could make the drug unavailable nationwide as of midnight this Friday.

The petition, which was filed Monday with the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, seeks a short-term administrative stay — as well as a long-term one — of the ruling issued by the lower court of the district judge US President Matthew Kacsmaryk, who ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for the abortion pill to be suspended.

An administrative stay would give the appeals court more time to consider whether Kacsmaryk’s ruling should be put on hold while the legal battle unfolds. The Justice Department and Danco, a maker of the drug mifepristone that intervened in the case to defend the FDA’s approval in 2000, had already filed notices of appeal.

Kacsmaryk said his order issued last Friday would take effect in seven days to give the Justice Department time to file appeals. If the Justice Department does not win a stay from the Fifth Circuit, it is expected to take the battle to the Supreme Court.

Kacsmaryk’s order, in a case brought in Texas by anti-abortion rights activists, appears to be at odds with another federal court ruling handed down less than an hour later in a different case on the other side of the country.

That second ruling said the FDA must keep the drug available in 17 Democratic-led states and the city of Washington, which sued to make it easier to get abortion pills. In that case, US District Judge Thomas O. Rice said the FDA could not do anything that would reduce the availability of the drug in the 18 jurisdictions that brought the lawsuit.

The Justice Department has not yet said whether it will appeal Rice’s order. The Justice Department asked Rice on Monday to clarify how the FDA should comply with its order if the Kacsmaryk ruling is allowed to take effect, with a filing pointing to “significant tension” between the two rulings.

Mifepristone is the first pill in the two-pill process for terminating a pregnancy. Medical abortion makes up the majority of abortions in the United States.