The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected an attempt to limit access to mifepristone—a safe, widely prescribed abortion medication that countless people rely on now more than ever. The ruling—wherein the Court declared the plaintiffs did not have the legal standing to bring their challenge, because they were just a bunch of antiabortion doctors who don’t like the idea of other doctors prescribing the drug—was a shocking one, given that the conservatives who overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago are still on the bench. And while obviously this outcome was preferable to the alternative, reproductive rights advocates are warning people not to take their eyes off the ball.
For one thing, abortion medication remains illegal in 14 states. For another, as The New York Times notes, attorneys general in Idaho, Missouri, and Kansas have already embarked on their own challenges to medication abortions, which may also wind up before the Supreme Court; and the Court on Thursday did not rule on the merits of the plaintiffs’ argument—only that they did not have “standing” to bring their case, meaning a legally savvier group could very well be more successful. “Unfortunately, the attacks on abortion pills will not stop here—the antiabortion movement sees how critical abortion pills are in this post-Roe world, and they are hell-bent on cutting off access,” Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northup said in a statement. “In the end, this ruling is not a ‘win’ for abortion—it just maintains the status quo, which is a dire public health crisis.”
Meanwhile, as no one needs to be reminded, there is a very real possibility that Donald Trump, who regularly brags about killing Roe v. Wade, could win in November and go after mifepristone then. Which a group of his backers is hoping he’ll do, and has given him explicit directions as to how. As Joe Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, told the Times, Project 2025—a series of policy proposals drafted by the Heritage Foundation—explicitly calls for ordering the FDA to reverse its decades-long approval of abortion pills. Trump allies, the Times notes, “are also pushing the revival of the Comstock Act, a 19th-century anti-vice law, to prohibit mailing the pills even in states that allow abortion.”
Speaking of Project 2025:
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