The Supreme Court agreed on Wednesday to take up a case about the drug regimen responsible for more than half of the nation’s abortions.
At the request of the Biden administration and the manufacturer of mifepristone Danco Laboratories, the highest court in the land will determine whether to let stand a ruling from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that found the Food and Drug Administration likely violated U.S. law when it approved the pill for mail order.
For more than two decades, pro-life doctors repeatedly asked the FDA to repeal its approval of chemical abortion drugs because “the agency violated federal laws by approving these drugs and ignoring the substantial evidence that these drugs harm women and girls.” Despite the FDA’s legal obligation to address these concerns, the agency repeatedly stonewalled petitioners’ requests for years.
Last year, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of five pro-life medical associations and institutions, along with doctors Shaun Jester, Regina Frost-Clark, Tyler Johnson, and George Delgado formally alleged in a federal lawsuit that the FDA wrongfully used accelerated drug approval authority to fast-track abortion pills that can cause dangerous and sometimes fatal complications.
A few months later, the FDA quietly modified its regulation to accommodate the White House’s abortion activism so pharmacies could become abortion pill dispensaries. Before that, mifepristone could only be obtained via abortion facility, doctor, or mail order, a lockdown-era provision the Biden administration made permanent in 2021. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court declined to evaluate the FDA’s initial approval of mifepristone but agreed to hear arguments about its mail-order authorization.
“As a practicing OB-GYN with over 30 years of experience, I have seen first-hand what the abortion pill regimen has done to my patients, both mother and child. As many as one in five women will suffer a complication such as hemorrhage or infection, and I have cared for many of these women in the ER,” Dr. Ingrid Skop, vice president and director of medical affairs at Charlotte Lozier Institute, said in a statement. “The Biden administration’s decision to weaken commonsense safeguards and remove doctors from the process shows they prioritize abortion on demand over the mother’s safety.”
More than two decades after the FDA rubber-stamped the abortion pill, Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk stayed their actions in April, claiming the FDA chose politics over safety to advance abortion pills.
The Supreme Court allowed the continued dissemination of abortion pills while the legal fight continued. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also allowed the FDA pill approval to stand but said the pills should not be prescribed via telemedicine or mail. That decision will now be reviewed by the Supreme Court.
“Every court so far has agreed that the FDA acted unlawfully in removing common-sense safeguards for women and authorizing dangerous mail-order abortions. We urge the Supreme Court to do the same,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erin Hawley, vice president of the Center for Life and Regulatory Practice, said in a statement.
The FDA’s 2000 endorsement of the abortion pills, Hawley said, “has harmed the health of women and undermined the rule of law by illegally removing every meaningful safeguard from the chemical abortion drug regimen.”
“Like any federal agency, the FDA must rationally explain its decisions. Yet its removal of common-sense safeguards—like a doctor’s visit before women are prescribed chemical abortion drugs—does not reflect scientific judgment but rather a politically driven decision to push a dangerous drug regimen,” she concluded.
