The Supreme Court has unanimously rejected a challenge from anti-abortion groups to the nationwide availability of the abortion medication mifepristone, which is available by mail and can be taken at home in many states. However, advocates warn the far-right-dominated court’s ruling on the FDA’s authority to regulate the pill was purely on procedural grounds, and could even offer a “roadmap” for future challenges. Mifepristone is used in roughly two-thirds of all U.S.
For more, we’re joined by Michele Goodwin, professor of constitutional law and global health policy at Georgetown University, founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy. She hosts theWhat it means is that mifepristone, which is used as part of a two-drug regimen in order to terminate pregnancy — the majority of pregnancy terminations, abortions, in the country take place with mifepristone. What this means is that it continues to be available nationwide.
Part of the challenge to this case by these people who brought it — and this is also important, Amy — these are people who claim to be doctors. Amongst them was a person who has a master’s degree in theology, who would never get medical admitting privileges at any hospital; another one, a dentist, who’s not a person that one would seek to have help in a gynecological ward.
Now, what this also says is a lot about how the U.S. judiciary has been functioning in recent years. There’s supposed to be objectivity, arm’s-length distancing, such that if one has personal views that may be oppositional in matters of race and sex and LGBTQ equality, that is not supposed to infect the process of judging.