The US Supreme Court has rejected a bid by anti-abortion groups and doctors to restrict access to the abortion pill, handing a victory to President Joe Biden’s administration in its efforts to preserve broad access to the drug.
The justices, two years after ending the recognition of a constitutional right to abortion, ruled in a unanimous decision authored by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh to overturn a lower court’s decision to roll back Food and Drug Administration steps in 2016 and 2021 that eased how the drug, called mifepristone, is prescribed and distributed.
The pill, given FDA regulatory approval in 2000, is used in more than 60 per cent of US abortions.
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The court ruled that the plaintiffs behind the lawsuit challenging mifepristone lacked the necessary legal standing to pursue the case, which required that they show they have been harmed in a way that can be traced to the FDA.
Kavanaugh wrote that even though the plaintiffs do not prescribe or use mifepristone, they want the FDA to make it harder for other doctors to prescribe it and women to receive it.
“Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff’s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue,” Kavanaugh wrote.
That provision of the Constitution lays out the authority of the judicial branch of the US government.
A ruling in favour of the plaintiffs could have threatened the regulatory authority of the FDA over drug safety.
The plaintiffs targeted FDA regulatory actions in 2016 and 2021, including allowing for medication abortions at up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven, and for mail delivery of the drug without a woman first seeing a clinician in person.
The suit initially had sought to reverse FDA approval of mifepristone, but that aspect was rebuffed by a lower court.
The case represented another front in the intensifying battle over abortion rights in the United States. The Supreme Court, which has a six-to-three conservative majority, in 2022 overturned its 1973 Roe v Wade precedent that had legalised abortion nationwide, prompting numerous states to enact Republican-backed measures banning or sharply restricting the procedure.
Biden, seeking a second term in office in the November 5 US election, is an outspoken advocate for abortion rights. He and his fellow Democrats have sought to make abortion rights a central theme against Republicans ahead of the election.
Abortion rights advocates and Democrats expressed relief at the decision, but also concern that the Supreme Court had entertained the case in the first place.
“The fact remains that this meritless case should never have gotten this far,” Center for Reproductive Rights President Nancy Northup said.
“Unfortunately, the attacks on abortion pills will not stop here. … In the end, this ruling is not a ‘win’ for abortion – it just maintains the status quo, which is a dire public health crisis in which 14 states have criminalised abortion,” Northup added.
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