Supreme Court unanimously rejects challenge to FDA's approval of abortion drug mifepristone
The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that pro-life doctor organizations have no standing to challenge the U.S. Food & Drug Administration's approval of the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone.
In a decision released Thursday morning in the case of FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, Justice Brett Kavanaugh delivered the opinion of the court, writing that “the plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain.”
“Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue. Nor do the plaintiffs’ other standing theories suffice. Therefore, the plaintiffs lack standing to challenge FDA’s actions,” wrote Kavanaugh, appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump.
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Justice Clarence Thomas, another conservative justice, authored a concurring opinion, writing that the ruling “correctly applies our precedents to conclude that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and other plaintiffs lack standing.”
“Our precedents require a plaintiff to demonstrate that the defendant’s challenged actions caused his asserted injuries. And, the Court aptly explains why plaintiffs have failed to establish that the Food and Drug Administration’s changes to the regulation of mifepristone injured them,” wrote Thomas.
“So, just as abortionists lack standing to assert the rights of their clients, doctors who oppose abortion cannot vicariously assert the rights of their patients.”
The case centers around the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's removal of in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone in 2021 and its 2016 decision to enable medical professionals other than doctors to dispense and prescribe the drug.
In November 2022, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations and four individual doctors sued the FDA over their decisions.
Last year, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, sided with the plaintiffs and struck down the FDA's approval of mifepristone in the U.S. The chemical abortion pill essentially destroys the environment in the uterus and starves an unborn baby to death.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the lower court ruling striking down the relaxed requirements for the abortion pill but put on hold the ruling against the decision to strike down the FDA's 2000 approval of the abortion pill.
On April 21 of last year, the Supreme Court released an unsigned ruling that allowed the chemical abortion drug to remain on the market while the legal proceedings continued.
Oral arguments before the Supreme Court were held in March.
