Supreme Court to decide if abortion pill mifepristone is too dangerous for women to use since the FDA removed safety precautions.
Legal experts are divided over how the Supreme Court will rule in an upcoming challenge to federal regulations that relaxed restrictions in 2016 and 2021 on the commonly used abortion pill mifepristone.
Advocates for mifepristone say the current system by which the drug is provided is safe, while opponents say it puts women at risk by ignoring the safety measures that used to be in place.
The Biden administration and pro-abortion groups worry that the Supreme Court’s eventual decision in the case could affect the availability of the drug.
At issue in the heavily litigated, complicated case are the FDA’s decision in 2016 to loosen prescription rules around mifepristone and then in 2021 to allow prescriptions to be sent by mail without the patient first visiting a physician in person.
This newest case is a consolidation of two cases—Food and Drug Administration (FDA) v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM) and Danco Laboratories LLC v. AHM.
Danco Laboratories makes the abortion pill mifepristone that is also known as RU-486.
The case is the Supreme Court’s most important abortion-related case since its June 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which found that there was no right to abortion in the U.S. Constitution. That ruling overturned Roe v. Wade and returned the regulation of abortion to the states.
In a virtual repeat of 2022 with Roe v. Wade, the decision is expected by June, at which point it could become a political issue in the November elections. It’s expected that if the court reimposes the old abortion pill restrictions, voters will blame Republicans and Democrats will benefit politically.
In 2022, former President Donald Trump blamed Republicans for mishandling the abortion issue post-Roe v. Wade as the reason for the GOP’s lackluster midterm performance.
According to a post-election analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly 40 percent of voters said the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade had a major impact on voter turnout in 2022. Meanwhile for 57 percent of Democrats who were surveyed, 33 percent of Independents, and 23 percent of Republicans the decision had a major impact on who they voted for.
