HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — Gov. Lou Leon Guerrero has joined 21 other governors nationwide in filing an amicus curiae brief on Jan. 30 with the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Food and Drug Administration, et al. v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, et al.
The brief was submitted by the Reproductive Freedom Alliance, or RFA, a coalition of U.S. governors seeking to protect and expand reproductive freedom in their jurisdictions, of which Guam is a member.
According to a press release from the Bureau of Women’s Affairs, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision in August 2023 restricting the abortion drug mifepristone. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone for use in 2000.
“More recently, the U.S. Supreme Court in December granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to review the case since overruling the long-standing Constitutional right to an abortion with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Pending the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, mifepristone is still available in those states where medication abortion is legal,” the bureau said in the release.
“Guam, as part of the RFA, argues in its brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that if the Court allows the 5th Circuit’s decision to stand, it could undermine governors’ ability to provide adequate health care services to the people in their jurisdictions and have far-reaching implications beyond reproductive health care. With such an unprecedented decision invalidating the FDA’s approval of a drug, the RFA argues that the 5th Circuit’s decision impacts governors’ reliance on safety and efficacy decisions by the FDA,” the bureau said in the release.
The governor stated in the release that the Leon Guerrero-Tenorio administration has “consistently maintained” that the choice to end a pregnancy is a private health care matter among a woman, her physician and anyone else she decides to include in that decision.
“Neither the government nor any other entity should dictate such a personal decision for an individual,” Leon Guerrero stated in the BWA release.
“Access to reproductive choice is part of the full range of reproductive health care that should be available to all of our people, including access to birth control, access to prenatal care, to mammograms and Pap smears, and yes – access to abortion. Abortion is part of reproductive health care,” the governor added.
BWA Director Jayne Flores stated that although the administration is working to expand access to birth control and prenatal care, “severely limiting the option of medication abortion altogether could put our women, girls and persons with a uterus on Guam in danger if they no longer have that option.”
Abortion currently is legal on Guam, but the Office of the Attorney General is trying to open up enforcement of a decades-old dormant abortion ban. The OAG has now petitioned the Supreme Court of the United States for a writ of certiorari regarding last year’s Supreme Court of Guam decision holding that the island’s abortion ban “no longer possesses any force or effect in Guam.”
Moreover, there is currently no abortion provider on Guam, leaving off-island travel or telemedicine as the only alternatives.
Two Hawaii-based doctors challenged Guam’s “in-person” consultation requirements for abortion in 2021, and won a preliminary injunction on the law that same year.
However, in August 2023, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the injunction, citing the Dobbs decision.
The 9th Circuit determined that with that decision, the regulation of abortion now lies with elected representatives, and the court plays only a minor role in applying a highly deferential rational basis review in assessing the constitutionality of abortion-related law.
Dozens of people came out to support abortion rights in the Rally for Roe, July 6, 2022, at the ITC intersection in Tamuning.
