Almost two years exactly since the right to an abortion was upended, the United States Supreme Court just issued a unanimous ruling that protects access to the abortion medication drug mifepristone.
It’s a shockingly good decision from the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.
This is incredibly important for folks seeking abortions – since Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, there has been an increase in patients using abortion drugs to terminate pregnancy. In 2023, nearly two-thirds of abortions in the United States were induced via medication.
What did the Supreme Court say about mifepristone?
The case was brought by anti-abortion doctors who argued that the Food and Drug Administration’s loosening of mifepristone’s regulations. Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling says these doctors don’t have the legal standing to bring this case through the court system.
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“The plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that FDA’s relaxed regulatory requirements likely would cause them to suffer an injury in fact,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “For that reason, the federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.”
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It also does not change the fact that this is the same Supreme Court that annihilated the nationwide right to an abortion. Nor does it change the fact that former president Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans are clearly not finished destroying abortion rights nationwide, something they began in 2022 with Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
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Trump has called himself the “most pro-life president in American history,” but his stance on the issue has been opaque during the campaign. He has said he would not call for a national ban, yet he recently praised a pro-life group trying to ban all abortions. In Project 2025, a document from the conservative Heritage Foundation outlining the plans for a Trump presidency, there are plans to try and remove mifepristone from the market.
A reminder that the abortion debate isn’t going away
So, Thursday’s ruling does not change the damage the anti-abortion fights have created. When the Dobbs ruling came down, 14 states banned abortion entirely. Eleven states are considered “hostile” to abortion by the Center for Reproductive Rights because of various time-based bans.
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I’m grateful that these anti-abortion doctors were told they had no standing in this case, but it just means that these doctors would instead need to log their complaints with the FDA or vote in the November election. We have to do the same.
It does not mean that medication abortion is completely safe, and I refuse to cheer on a Supreme Court for the mifepristone ruling when they are the sole reason abortions are no longer available nationwide.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Supreme Court protects mifepristone – for now. Don’t get complacent
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