Supreme Court upholds access to abortion pill

More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000.

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Image Credit: Planned Parenthood

In a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court decided to uphold access to the abortion pill, mifepristone. The case against the abortion pill, which was brought about by a group of anti-abortion advocates called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, called into question the Food and Drug Administration’s approval and expertise of the pill, which has been accessible for over two decades.

The Supreme Court ruled that the “opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the medication, mifepristone, and the FDA’s subsequent actions to ease access to it.

“The court issued the only reasonable decision in this case — for now,” Jodi Hicks, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, said. “But we can’t let our guard down.”

Opponents in the case, which began five months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe, argued that the FDA’s decisions in 2016 and 2021 to relax restrictions by allowing the pill’s accessibility by mail and telemedicine were “unreasonable” and “jeopardize women’s health across the nation.”

While SBA Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s largest anti-abortion groups, called the decision “deeply disappointing,” President Kristan Hawkins of Students for Life of America, a pro-life advocacy organization, said, “We’ll be back.”

More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000, Causes.com reported.

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