(NewsNation) — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday to reject a lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of the abortion medication mifepristone, which has been widely available for more than 20 years.
The court said petitioners don’t have standing to challenge the FDA’s approval of the pill and it will continue to allow pills to be mailed to patients without an in-person doctor’s visit.
The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal.
SCOTUS unanimously preserves mifepristone access
The court’s unanimous ruling is a notable setback for the anti-abortion movement and comes after the conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. This was the court’s first abortion decision since that ruling two years ago.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the majority to overturn Roe, wrote the opinion for a unanimous court, stating that “federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.”
The court is also considering another abortion case about whether a federal law on emergency treatment at a hospital overrides state abortion bans in rare emergency cases in which a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk.
Opponents: Restrictions ‘jeopardize women’s health’
The abortion opponents argued in court papers that the FDA’s decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on getting the drug were unreasonable and “jeopardize women’s health access to the nation.”
The mifepristone case began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
Abortion opponents initially won a sweeping ruling nearly a year ago from U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk that would have revoked the drug’s approval entirely.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals left intact the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone. But it would reverse changes regulators made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.
The Supreme Court put the appeals court’s modified ruling on hold, then agreed to hear the case, though Justices Samuel Alito, the author of the decision overturning Roe, and Clarence Thomas would have allowed some restrictions to take effect while the case proceeded.
The Biden administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could undermine the FDA’s drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency’s scientific judgment.
What is mifepristone?
Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation.
Mifepristone was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year. More than 6 million people have used the pill since 2000.
Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.