Almost two years exactly since the right to abortion was overturned, the Supreme Court of the United States has just issued a unanimous decision that protects access to the abortion drug mifepristone.
It’s a shockingly good ruling from the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority.
This is extremely important for people seeking abortions – since Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade. Wade in 2022, there has been an increase in the number of patients using abortion drugs to terminate pregnancies. In 2023, almost two thirds of abortions in the United States they were induced through medication.
What did the Supreme Court say about mifepristone?
The case was brought by anti-abortion doctors who argued the Food and Drug Administration’s loosening of mifepristone regulations. Thursdays Supreme Court ruling says that these doctors do not have the legitimacy to take this case to the judicial system.
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“Plaintiffs have failed to demonstrate that the FDA’s relaxation of regulatory requirements would likely cause them a de facto harm,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion. “For this reason, federal courts are the wrong forum to address plaintiffs’ concerns about the FDA’s actions.”
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It also doesn’t change the fact that this is the same Supreme Court that annihilated the national right to abortion. It also doesn’t change the fact that former President Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans clearly aren’t done destroying abortion rights across the country, something they began in 2022 with Dobbs v. Wade.
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Trump calls himself the “most pro-life president in American history,” but his stance on the issue was opaque during the campaign. He said he would not call for a national ban, but recently praised a pro-life group trying to ban all abortions. In Project 2025a document from the conservative Heritage Foundation outlining plans for Trump’s presidency, there are plans to try to remove mifepristone from the market.
A reminder that the abortion debate will not go away
Therefore, Thursday’s decision does not change the damage that anti-abortion struggles have created. When the Dobbs decision was made, 14 states have banned abortion fully. Eleven states are considered “hostile” to abortion by the Center for Reproductive Rights because of various time-based bans.
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I’m grateful that these anti-abortion doctors were told that they had no standing in this case, but that just means that these doctors would need to instead file their complaints with the FDA or vote in the November election. We have to do the same.
This does not mean that medication abortion is completely safe, and I refuse to applaud the Supreme Court for the mifepristone decision when this is the only reason abortion is no longer available nationwide.
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This article originally appeared in USA TODAY: The Supreme Court protects mifepristone – for now. Don’t get complacent
