The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to the federal Food and Drug Administration's regulation of mifepristone, one of the drugs that make up what’s known as the abortion pill.
On June 13, nearly two years after it overturned Roe v. Wade, the court unanimously agreed that the anti-abortion doctors who filed the lawsuit that put the abortion pill in question did not have legal standing to sue, according to NBC News.
The case stemmed from a lawsuit, brought by a group of anti-abortion doctors and advocates called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in 2022, questioned the FDA's initial approval of mifepristone, and its moves in recent years to make the drug more accessible. A Texas federal judge initially ruled in the plaintiffs’ favor, which would have threatened access to the abortion pill nationwide, but the case reached the Supreme Court after a series of appeals. Because the Supreme Court rejected the challenge, the previous ruling will now be thrown out, allowing the abortion pill to remain available.
Mifepristone is used in combination with the drug misoprostol to block the hormones needed to carry a pregnancy, and to empty the uterus, triggering an abortion. Together, the drugs have been found to be very safe and effective, and have been made more widely available since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, when in-clinic abortions were more difficult to access. And, abortion pill use has been on the rise. Research by the Guttmacher Institute found that in 2020, medication abortion accounted for about half of all abortions. In 2023, that figure rose to about 63% — or almost two-thirds — of all abortions.
According to a statement from Ushma Upadhyay, PhD, MPH, a professor with University of California San Francisco's Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health, medication abortion via telehealth has also played a crucial role in preserving abortion access after Roe v. Wade was overturned.
“Access to medication abortion care should never have been in question – policies predicated on junk science have no place in health care. Decades of evidence affirm that medication abortion is safe and effective – maintaining and advancing access to it will benefit public health and patient wellbeing," Dr. Upadhyay said in the statement sent to Teen Vogue. "We know that medication abortion via telehealth has been pivotal to preserving the abortion access landscape in the wake of the Dobbs decision, with care provided via telehealth accounting for 19% of all abortions nationwide. We must safeguard evidence-based medicine, patient safety, and scientific progress by protecting and expanding access to medication abortion care.”
The court's decision means there's no immediate threat to abortion pill access in the U.S., beyond what barriers state-level abortion bans already pose. Still, NBC News reports that because the court rejected the case because there weren't legal grounds to sue, and did not rule on the lawsuit's other claims, similar cases could still be filed.