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How the mifepristone case before SCOTUS could affect abortion in Pennsylvania • Pennsylvania Capital-Star

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How the mifepristone case before SCOTUS could affect abortion in Pennsylvania • Pennsylvania Capital-Star


The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing a case that could put limits on access to mifepristone, a drug used in medication abortions.

Pennsylvania is widely considered a “safe” state for reproductive rights: Abortion is legal up to 24 weeks, and Gov. Josh Shapiro was among 21 governors who urged the U.S. Supreme Court in an amicus brief to rule in favor of access to mifepristone. 

“I believe in women’s freedom to choose – and as long as I’m Governor, I will always defend freedom in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” Shapiro said in a statement in January. 

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Medication abortion includes mifepristone as the first drug and misoprostol as the second. The two-drug regimen accounted for about 63% of abortions within the United States in 2023, according to a March report from the Guttmacher Institute.

And according to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, medication abortions accounted for more than half of all abortions performed in the state in 2022, the most recent year for which data was available. 

The case

Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit in November 2022, challenging the original approval of the abortion pill in 2000 as well as the changes to when and how the drug could be used that were made in 2016 and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians and the Christian Medical & Dental Associations as well as four doctors from California, Indiana, Michigan and Texas.

The case before SCOTUS, Food and Drug Administration (FDA)  v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM), seeks to revert the use of mifepristone back to what was in place before the FDA began making changes in 2016, and would potentially restrict mifepristone from being sent to patients through the mail.

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US Supreme Court to decide fate of medication abortion access nationwide 

Michael Gibson, director of communications for Planned Parenthood of Western Pennsylvania, called the case “politically motivated and not in the interest of patients or providers.” He added that the case could have potential consequences for patient access to other FDA-approved medications.   

“The Mifepristone case is a baseless lawsuit, and has been instigated and funded by anti-abortion extremists to further their agenda to eliminate abortion, birth control, and other sexual and reproductive health care nationwide,” Gibson said. “Mifepristone is a safe and common drug used in medication abortions for more than 20 years, and the FDA’s authority over medication approvals should never have been challenged. “

Justices seemed skeptical

During oral arguments in March, several of the Supreme Court justices seemed to question the premise of the original lawsuit, that anti-abortion doctors would be potentially harmed by having to treat patients suffering complications from using mifepristone.

“I’m worried that there is a significant mismatch in this case between the claimed injury and the remedy that’s being sought,”Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, appointed by President Joe Biden, said. “The obvious, common-sense remedy would be to provide them with an exemption that they don’t have to participate in this procedure.”

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But, Jackson noted, the anti-abortion doctors were seeking changes in access to mifepristone for everyone in the country.

“And I guess I’m just trying to understand how they could possibly be entitled to that, given the injury that they have alleged,” Jackson said.

Erin Morrow Hawley argued on behalf of Alliance Defending Freedom and the anti-abortion doctors that conscience protections don’t go far enough.

“These are emergency situations,” Hawley said. “Respondent doctors don’t necessarily know until they scrub into that operating room whether this may or may not be abortion drug harm — it could be a miscarriage, it could be an ectopic pregnancy, or it could be an elective abortion.”

U.S. Supreme Court justices seem skeptical of limits on access to abortion medication

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The justices’ questions would seem to indicate things may not tilt in favor of the AHM. 

“The oral argument before the U.S. Supreme Court in FDA v Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine revealed that most of the justices are skeptical of AHM’s standing to bring the litigation, so all signs are pointing to a ruling that will not change anything about the availability of mifepristone in Pennsylvania,” Susan J. Frietsche, Co-Executive Director of Women’s Law Project told the Capital-Star. 

If SCOTUS’ decision rolled back to the pre-2016 restrictions, mifepristone could only be administered by a doctor, not another medical practitioner. Under Pennsylvania state law, Frietsche noted, only doctors can provide abortion care, so reverting to that provision wouldn’t affect patients here. 

She added that it was unclear how the old restrictions would be enforced, however, “so it is difficult to predict whether access to mifepristone would be restricted immediately or more slowly should the Court rule against the FDA.”

The court is expected to issue its ruling in the case this summer.

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Suspect arrested for shooting near basketball court in Elkins Park, Pa.

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Suspect arrested for shooting near basketball court in Elkins Park, Pa.


ABINGTON TWP., Pa. (WPVI) — Police have arrested a suspect who they say fired shots at a vehicle near a crowded basketball court in Montgomery County.

Jamell Whitmore, 18, of King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, was arrested on Thursday.

The shooting happened on March 22 near a basketball court on the 300 block of Cadwalader Avenue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania.

Shooting near Elkins Park basketball courts sends stray bullet into home

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Police said multiple callers reported hearing gunfire around 8:15 p.m. and witnessed a large group of people run from the area behind the McKinley Firehouse.

As a vehicle drove by, one of the men in the group, identified by police as Whitmore, ran off to the parking lot to retrieve a gun and began firing multiple shots towards the vehicle.

Police say it’s unclear if the vehicle was hit, but one of the bullets struck a nearby home.

No one in the home was injured.

Police said no innocent bystanders or those involved in the shooting were injured.

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The motive for the shooting remains unknown.

Copyright © 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.



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Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release

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Pennsylvania-born indie rockers Tigers Jaw return with new album release


The chorus for the song “Primary Colors” was something Walsh wrote years ago, with the song’s outro originally being used as a verse.

“And something just wasn’t quite clicking, and everything that I tried felt kind of forced,” Walsh said. “We were all just like, ‘Yeah, there’s something here, but it’s not quite doing what I think it has the potential to do.’”

The band then started toying with the dynamics between the verses and the chorus.

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“It just unlocked something for me in the idea where I was like, ‘Wow, this kind of quiet, loud, quiet, loud format really works well with this song,’” Walsh said. “So yeah, it just transformed it instantly into an idea that felt a lot stronger.”

The album was recorded with Grammy-winning producer Will Yip, a relationship still budding from their 2014 album, “Charmer.” Collins said the new album’s sound is “as true as we could be to playing the record live.”

“I wasn’t as tied to the tones that have classically been Tigers Jaw because I think at this point, I’ve just come to this realization that no matter what, if we’re making it, it is Tigers Jaw,” Collins said.

The new album has a “palpable energy” that shares the same spirit as their earlier records, Walsh said. And while “tastes evolve,” the band followed “what feels good.”

“This is the best representation of the band at the time, and it’s almost like a snapshot of us as artists, as people, as a creative entity over this time in our career,” he said.

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“Lost On You” is out now through Hopeless Records and is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

“Lost On You” was released on March 27, 2026, through Hopeless Records. The album is available on vinyl, CD and various streaming platforms.

On April 16, Tigers Jaw will perform at Union Transfer at 8 p.m. They will be supported by Hot Flash Heat Wave and Creeks, the solo project of Balance and Composure vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons, who is from Doylestown, Pennsylvania.





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Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder

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Pennsylvania court upends mandatory use of life-without-parole for second-degree murder


What to Know

  • Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court says the state cannot automatically give life without parole for felony murder without weighing each defendant’s culpability in the killing.
  • The high court on Thursday ordered a new sentencing hearing for Derek Lee over a second-degree conviction, but paused it for four months to give state lawmakers time to consider legislation in response.
  • Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death. Life with no possibility of parole has been the only possible sentence.
  • The court says the current rule treats a lookout the same as the person who kills.

Pennsylvania’s high court on Thursday overturned the use of automatic life sentences without parole for people convicted of second-degree murder, saying it violates the state’s constitutional ban on cruel punishment when imposed without a closer look at the defendant’s specific role and culpability.

The court majority ordered resentencing in the case of Derek Lee, convicted of a 2014 killing in Pittsburgh, but the decision also has implications for others among the roughly 1,000 other inmates currently serving similar second-degree murder sentences.

The court’s order was put on hold for four months to give the General Assembly time to “consider appropriate remedial measures.” In a footnote, the justices said they were ruling on Lee’s sentence and not addressing “questions of retroactivity.”

Prison reform groups hailed it as a landmark decision, while the Allegheny County district attorney’s office said it will follow the court’s order.

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Pennsylvania law has made people liable for second-degree murder if they participated in an eligible felony that led to death, and life without parole has been the only possible sentence.

“The mandatory penalty scheme of life without parole for all offenders convicted of second degree murder fails to assess individual culpability regarding the intent to kill, and mandates the same punishment regardless of that culpability,” wrote Chief Justice Debra Todd in the lead opinion. She characterized it as not distinguishing “between the lookout, and the killer who pulls the trigger.”

The state high court’s decision comes after years of advocacy to undo mandatory life without parole sentences both in Pennsylvania and nationally. Nazgol Ghandnoosh of the Washington-based Sentencing Project said she counts 11 states and the federal system as having such laws for that kind of crime, sometimes called felony murder. Several states — California, Colorado and Minnesota — have moved away from that sentencing framework in recent years, she said.

Justice Kevin Dougherty noted in a separate opinion that unlike those convicted of first-degree murder, defendants serving life without parole for second-degree murder have “never been found by a judge or jury to have harbored the specific intent to kill” and may not have had “any involvement whatsoever with the actual killing. He or she does not even have to expect or foresee that a life may be taken.”

Lee’s lawyers had wanted the court to rule that life without parole sentences are unconstitutional for all second-degree murder convictions in Pennsylvania, said Quinn Cozzens, a staff attorney for the Abolitionist Law Center, which helped represent Lee. Instead, the court ruled that trial judges must examine the individual circumstances of a defendant’s case to decide which sentence is most appropriate, including the potential of life without parole.

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The state’s public defenders’ association said the ruling will generate new post-conviction litigation and require them to do more investigation as well as develop “strategic litigation” to get the decision to apply retroactively.

A jury convicted Lee of second-degree murder but acquitted him of first-degree murder in 44-year-old Leonard Butler’s shooting death. Butler was shot in a struggle over a gun with Lee’s codefendant, Paul Durham.

Prosecutors argued it should be up to state lawmakers and the executive branch to address the policy issues surrounding second-degree murder sentences. Todd wrote that while the district attorney’s office “acknowledges that there may be persuasive arguments why a non-slayer should not be held to the same degree of culpability as the slayer, it stresses that these are policy decisions for the General Assembly.”

Cozzens urged lawmakers to “address this constitutional violation, given that the court granted them the opportunity to do so.”

Rep. Tim Briggs, a suburban Philadelphia Democrat who chairs the state House Judiciary Committee, said he planned to engage with Senate Republicans on potential legislation in response.

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Briggs said he wanted to have decision apply retroactively, to give people serving life “for being the getaway driver” to “have the opportunity to have their facts looked at again.”

“I think inaction leaves a lot of this up to the courts to decide. I don’t feel comfortable doing that,” Briggs said. “We have a policymaking role here.”

Justice Sallie Mundy wrote that Lee “willingly participated in an armed home invasion and robbery, and purposefully engaged in assaultive behavior in the form of tasing and pistol-whipping the victim.” She said Lee and Durham “arguably kidnapped the victims by forcing them into the basement” and it will be up to the county judge to decide if Lee’s life-without-parole sentence is appropriate.

Todd’s opinion, citing an advocacy group, said 73% of those convicted of felony murder in Pennsylvania were 25 or younger when the killing occurred and almost 70% are Black people.

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro also responded to the ruling on X.

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