Supreme Court to Weigh in on Abortion Pill Debate: 'It Is Inherently Dangerous'

The Supreme Court will once again weigh in on the abortion debate this upcoming term with the justices this time hearing a case that could limit access to an abortion pill known as Mifepristone.

The case centers around how the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows the pill to be prescribed. 

It was approved for use in a controversial manner 23 years ago. That approval required an in-person prescription, but the abortion-inducing drug has been available through telemedicine and by mail since 2016. Critics say that puts women's lives at risk because a doctor can't fully assess them.

This is the first abortion case the court will hear since the monumental Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

As CBN News reported in August, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was wrong to remove safety measures for mifepristone.

"In loosening mifepristone's safety restrictions, FDA failed to address several important concerns about whether the drug would be safe for the women who use it," Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod wrote. She was joined by Judge Cory Wilson. 

In its ruling, the court restored other safety measures to protect women, saying mifepristone should only be allowed through the seventh week of pregnancy rather than the 10th, and it must be administered in the presence of a physician.  

Pro-life groups appealed the case to the Supreme Court to try to get mifepristone's approval fully revoked. 

Lila Rose, founder and president of Live Action, urged the high court to rule in favor of removing the pill from the market. 

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"Mifepristone [the abortion pill] has only one authorized use — to kill innocent children — was approved illegitimately, and has killed millions of American kids. The Supreme Court must follow the law and remove the drug that kills from the market," she said in a statement. 

Katie Daniel, the state policy director at Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life advocacy group, told CBN's Faith Nation the Supreme Court will be focused on how the drug will be regulated in the future. 

"The court is focused on whether the FDA broke the law when it brought these drugs to market and when it subsequently changed the rules, loosening them up for how the drugs were regulated," she shared. "So far, two courts have found that it probably did."

Daniel continued, "The FDA also has this drug under a black box. That is their most serious safety regulation. It says both the public and medical professionals need to understand that it is inherently dangerous...death is also a side effect."

"It is a huge part of this case because what is at issue is whether the FDA took those issues seriously enough when it allowed these pills to be sent through the mail including to children without their parents knowing," she added. 

Students for Life of America filed an amicus brief in the case. President Kristan Hawkins noted, "The Biden Administration has been the best friend Planned Parenthood ever had, in setting up an online pill-pushing market that allows them to skip the costs of life-saving tests for women and to ignore the risks of pollution by permitting chemically tainted blood, tissue, and human remains to be dumped in our waterways." 
 
"This case will address a key question: What is more important – Making life easy for abortionists or protecting the environment along with mothers and preborn children? Frankly, nowhere in the U.S. Constitution do I see a requirement to skip testing and health and safety standards so that innocent lives can be ended with pills," she added. 

A ruling is expected to come down in June 2024. 

"Every court so far has agreed that the FDA acted unlawfully in removing common-sense safeguards for women and authorizing dangerous mail-order abortions," Erin Hawley, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom said in a statement. "We urge the Supreme Court to do the same. The FDA has harmed the health of women and undermined the rule of law by illegally removing every meaningful safeguard from the chemical abortion drug regimen."