ABORTION, SUPREME COURT
Ruling on Abortion Pills: a Win, For Now
Other lawsuits, opposing ballot measures are on the way
The Supreme Court’s unanimous opinion to continue to allow access to an abortion pill may seem inconsistent with its 2022 ruling to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.
But the June 14 decision was based on the obvious: The Texas group of conservative activists and medical groups that filed the lawsuit had no standing to challenge the federal government’s 2000 approval of mifepristone, now used in more than half of U.S. abortions. Part of a two-drug regimen, the drug is used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks.
The lawsuit by the Alliance for Defending Freedom sought to ban the medication as unsafe, but the appeals court only barred mail-order prescriptions — even in states supporting abortion rights. The high court overturned that ruling with this new ruling.
Laws already protect doctors who have objections about prescribing thr medication’, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion. “But citizens and doctors do not have standing to sue simply because others are allowed to engage in certain activities — at least without the plaintiffs demonstrating how they would be injured by the government’s alleged under-regulation of others.”
