SCOTUS upholds abortion pill access

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The Supreme Court maintained access to the abortion pill mifepristone, unanimously refusing to hear a case brought by a number of anti-abortion organizations and doctors over the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the pill.

“The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion issued Thursday. “But under Article III of the Constitution, those kinds of objections alone do not establish a justiciable case or controversy in federal court.”

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In Thursday’s ruling, the Supreme Court agreed. “Plaintiffs are pro-life, oppose elective abortion, and have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to mifepristone being prescribed and used by others. Because plaintiffs do not prescribe or use mifepristone, plaintiffs are unregulated parties who seek to challenge FDA’s regulation of others,” wrote Kavanaugh, who ruled in favor of Dobbs. But the AHM failed to show how patients taking mifepristone would force anti-abortion doctors to “participate in an abortion.” The doctors, in other words, failed to show how they had been or could be affected by the existence of mifepristone besides objecting to its availability.

Kavanaugh’s decision states that the AHM’s argument could lead to “a new doctrine of doctor standing” that would, in turn, allow any group of professionals to sue over policies they didn’t agree with. “Firefighters could sue to object to relaxed building codes that increase fire risks,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Teachers in border states could sue to challenge allegedly lax immigration policies that lead to overcrowded classrooms.”

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