Opinion editor’s note: Editorials represent the opinions of the Star Tribune Editorial Board, which operates independently from the newsroom.
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A reprieve. Not a vindication.
For all who care about women’s health care and freedom, this guarded perspective is the appropriate response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Thursday involving mifepristone, a prescription medication that has been widely and safely used to induce abortions for 24 years.
The nine justices unanimously ruled against a little-known anti-abortion organization that took aim at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone as well as subsequent actions by the agency to ease patient access to it.
The decision is welcome, but it didn’t shut the door to future challenges to this drug or others typically used in combination with it for medication abortions, meaning abortions in which pills are taken in lieu of a surgical procedure. Legislation, such as the Protecting Access to Medication Abortion Act introduced in 2023 by Minnesota’s U.S. Sen. Tina Smith, is still urgently needed to safeguard access.
The reason: The nine justices didn’t decide on the case’s underlying questions about federal health officials’ approval of the drug or changes that have made it easier to access it. Instead, the decision focused on plaintiffs’ standing to bring the case.
“The plaintiffs do not prescribe or use mifepristone. And FDA is not requiring them to do or refrain from doing anything. Rather, the plaintiffs want FDA to make mifepristone more difficult for other doctors to prescribe and for pregnant women to obtain,“ wrote Justice Brett Kavanaugh, the decision’s chief author. “Under Article III of the Constitution, a plaintiff‘s desire to make a drug less available for others does not establish standing to sue.”