The Supreme Court is preserving access to the medication that was used in nearly two thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, with a ruling on the abortion pill mifepristone.
It's the court's first abortion decision since conservative justices overturned Roe V. Wade two years ago. It was a unanimous decision by the country's highest court.
The justices ruled Thursday morning that abortion opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the Federal Food and Drug Administration's approval of the medication mifepristone and the FDA's subsequent actions to ease access to it.
The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country including in states where abortion remains legal. It's one of two abortion cases at the high court this term.
Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.
President Joe Biden’s administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in this case could undermine the FDA’s drug approval process beyond the abortion context by inviting judges to second-guess the agency’s scientific judgments.
The Democratic administration and New York-based Danco Laboratories, which makes mifepristone, argued that the drug is among the safest the FDA has ever approved.
The abortion opponents argued in court papers that the FDA’s decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions on getting the drug were unreasonable and “jeopardize women’s health across the nation.”
What is Mifepristone?
More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000. Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. The two-drug regimen has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation.
New York Attorney General Letitia James has called the ruling a “major victory for reproductive rights across our nation.”
The Associated Press contributed to this story.