The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit that threatened to block, or at least limit, access to mifepristone, a pill approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for medication abortion and also used to treat miscarriages. The drug has been in use for decades and has amassed a remarkably good safety record in that time. It is currently used for the majority of abortions in the United States.
The Supreme Court found that anti-abortion medical groups that legally challenged the FDA’s decision to approve the drug in 2000 and then relax usage restrictions in 2016 and 2021 lacked standing to challenge those decisions at all. That is, the groups failed to prove they were harmed by the FDA’s decisions and therefore had no basis to legally challenge the agency’s actions. The ruling largely echoes the comments and questions raised by the justices during oral arguments in March.
“Plaintiffs are pro-life and opposed to elective abortion, and they raise serious legal, moral, ideological and policy objections to the prescription and use of mifepristone. By othersThe Supreme Court opinionemphasizing the “by others.” The court concluded that the groups presented “complex theories of causation linking FDA’s actions to Plaintiffs’ alleged actual harm,” and found that “none of these theories” was sufficient to prove harm.
Weak arguments
Anti-abortion medical groups, led by the Hippocratic Medical Union, argued that the FDA’s loosening of mifepristone restrictions could cause “downstream conscience injuries” to doctors who are forced to treat patients who may suffer from the drug’s (rare) complications. But the court noted that strong federal conscience laws are already in place to protect doctors who refuse to provide abortion care. Moreover, doctors have not presented any examples of being forced to provide care against their conscience.
The plaintiffs further alleged that they suffered “downstream economic harm” by having to divert resources from other patients and services. The Court flatly rejected this argument as well, finding that it was “too speculative, unsupported by the record, and too weakly supported to establish standing.” The groups further argued that the FDA’s actions “compelled” them to “conduct research” and engage in advocacy and education activities. “But groups that have not suffered tangible harm from the defendants’ actions cannot establish standing simply by expending resources on information gathering and advocacy against the defendants’ actions,” the Court ruled.
Following the ruling, reproductive health rights group National Reproductive Health Institute slammed the lower court’s actions in bringing the case to the Supreme Court, describing it as a warning. “This case should never have come to the Supreme Court in the first place,” National Reproductive Health Institute interim president Haydee Morales said in a statement. “Abortion opponents brought this case with one goal in mind: to ban medication abortions, and they failed. This case came close to failing the scientific and medical communities, but this will not be their final blow.”
