On Thursday, the United States Supreme Court ruled that a group of doctors did not have the legal standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of mifepristone, the drug that causes a pregnant woman to have an abortion.
The unanimous opinion in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine was written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
“Plaintiffs are pro-life, oppose elective abortion, and have sincere legal, moral, ideological, and policy objections to mifepristone being prescribed and used by others,” the opinion reads. “Because plaintiffs do not prescribe or use mifepristone, plaintiffs are unregulated parties who seek to challenge FDA’s regulation of others.”
“Plaintiffs advance several complicated causation theories to connect FDA’s actions to the plaintiffs’ alleged injuries in fact,” he added. “None of these theories suffices to establish Article III standing.”
Pro-life groups came out opposed to the court’s ruling.
“It is a sad day for all who value women’s health and unborn children’s lives, but the fight to stop dangerous mail-order abortion drugs is not over. Abortion drugs send approximately one in 25 women to the ER according to the FDA’s own label, yet the abortion lobby gaslights women about the risks and seeks to block states from even collecting safety data. Planned Parenthood boasts about dispensing these high-risk drugs by app, ‘completely free of face-to-face interaction with a clinician,’ to anyone with a mailing address – including traffickers and abusers,” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America State Policy Director Katie Daniel said.
“Mail-order abortion drugs are fueling domestic violence against women like Catherine Herring and her daughter Josephine, but the abortion industry does not care. The old talking point that abortion is a ‘choice between a woman and her doctor’ has been exposed as a lie. We stand with our allies, Attorneys General Raúl Labrador, Kris Kobach and Andrew Bailey, fighting to hold government bureaucrats accountable for betraying women and children,” she added.
Townhall previously covered how Catherine Herring’s ex-husband, Mason Herring, gave his then-wife abortion pills without her knowledge. Mason Herring, an attorney in Houston, Texas, took a plea deal and would serve 180 days in jail and 10 years probation for trying to kill his unborn child.
“It is deeply disappointing that the FDA was not held accountable today for its reckless decisions. As a practicing OB-GYN with over 30 years’ experience, I have seen firsthand that mail-order abortion drugs harm my patients, both mothers and their unborn children. Abortion advocates and corporate media ignore their stories as they shamelessly promote mail-order distribution of dangerous drugs without a single in-person doctor visit. As a tragic result, I expect to see more women need blood transfusions, emergency surgery and other drastic measures and our emergency medical systems overwhelmed. This is not health care, it’s abandonment and the pro-life community will never stop advocating for patients,” Ingrid Skop, M.D., who is vice president and director of medical affairs at Charlotte Lozier Institute added.
"The March for Life is disappointed by the Supreme Court’s decision today in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine which enables the FDA to continue disregarding the health and safety of women and young girls across the nation. The agency’s reckless removal of nearly all safeguards surrounding the drug — like the care of a medical provider and the requirement for prescribers to report medical emergencies — is unacceptable, and the FDA’s own label on mifepristone shows that roughly 1 in 25 women are forced to go to the emergency room because of horrific complications. We will continue to educate and advocate on the need for commonsense protections when it comes to women's health and well-being and defending the most vulnerable," March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said in a statement.
“Joe Biden and the Democrats are hell-bent on forcing abortion on demand any time for any reason, including DIY mail-order abortions, on every state in the country. Pro-abortion fearmongering has hit new lows as the Democrats go all in on abortion to save them in the coming elections. They seek to shut down pregnancy resource centers, ban safe and effective Abortion Pill Reversal, put pro-life advocates in jail and rewrite all the laws to make sure abortion is the only ‘choice’ available. It is they who are playing political games with women’s lives, while every pro-life state in the country protects them,” SBA President Marjorie Dannenfelser said.
The issue of “telemedicine” abortions came after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, which Townhall covered. A majority of Americans oppose this, according to a Marist/Knights of Columbus poll. According to the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, medication abortions account for the majority of abortions in the United States. When these drugs are sent through the mail, pregnant women never see a doctor in-person before they terminate their pregnancy.
“Unfortunately, with today's Supreme Court’s decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, President Biden’s FDA can continue - for now - to prioritize woke politics over women’s health and safety. The agency’s elimination of commonsense safeguards around mail-order chemical abortion drugs place women and girls all across the country in harm’s way. Mifepristone, the dangerous abortion drug at the center of the case, currently sends 1 in 25 women to the emergency room with severe, even life-threatening, medical emergencies, according to the FDA’s own label," Solidarity HealthShare president Chris Faddis said.
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