The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously rejected a Texas challenge to mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug
The case stemmed from a 2022 lawsuit filed by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, an anti-abortion medical group. The lawsuit argued that the drug’s approval in 2000 should be reversed, and the case was heard by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an anti-abortion judge.
However, the nine justices ruled that the medication can be distributed without any change. In his opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, wrote that the medical group can’t sue because they might “desire to make a drug less available for others.”
According to the Texas Tribune, the ruling says that the plaintiffs do not use or prescribe mifepristone and are not required by the Food and Drug Administration to prescribe it, so they are unaffected by its distribution.
“Federal law fully protects doctors against being required to provide abortions or other medical treatment against their consciences—and therefore breaks any chain of causation between FDA’s relaxed regulation of mifepristone and any asserted conscience injuries to the doctors,” the ruling reads.
“The plaintiffs have sincere legal, moral, ideological objections to elective abortion and to FDA’s relaxed regulation,” wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh for the court, “but they failed to demonstrate” any actual injury.
The ruling also states that doctors and other health care providers do not have the power to change federal health policy.
Missouri, Kansas, and Idaho have also challenged the approval of mifepristone, but this Supreme Court decision does not rule on those future challenges.
Mifepristone was approved in 2000 by the FDA to be used alongside misoprostol to terminate a pregnancy up to seven weeks, now it is approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy.
Using mifepristone alongside misoprostol is the most common abortion method in the U.S. Misoprostol alone can be used too to terminate a pregnancy, but it is less effective than combined with mifepristone.
Performing an abortion is still illegal in Texas, even if the drugs are dispensed. However, people in Texas who want to terminate a pregnancy in the state have been able to obtain medication through international nonprofit organizations such as Aid Access.
