OnPolitics: Supreme Court preserves access to mifepristone
Hey OnPolitics readers! Two years after erasing the constitutional right to an abortion, the Supreme Court on Thursday went the other direction and tossed out a challenge to the widely used abortion drug mifepristone that would have curbed access to the drug and jeopardized the independence of the Food and Drug Administration.
The court said the anti-abortion doctors who challenged the FDA’s loosening of rules for how mifepristone can be prescribed and dispensed lacked a legitimate basis to bring their suit, Paste BN's Maureen Groppe reported. The challengers’ “sincere legal, moral, ideological and policy objections” to mifepristone don't give them standing to sue, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion.
❓What is mifepristone? First approved in 2000, mifepristone is now used in nearly two-thirds of abortions in the nation and is a reason the total number of abortions has increased even after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
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❌What's next? Erin Hawley, the Alliance Defending Freedom attorney who represented the anti-abortion doctors, said her group is not giving up. She noted that Missouri, Kansas and Idaho have also challenged mifepristone.
🌵Health care deserts: The doctors involved in the case don’t prescribe mifepristone. They argued, however, that the FDA’s changes made it likely they would have to treat women who have emergency complications from taking mifepristone, something that is morally and ethically objectionable to them.
Read more: Supreme Court preserves access to widely used abortion medication mifepristone
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