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If you were worried the Supreme Court was going to ban the\u00a0abortion\u00a0drug mifepristone\u2014an entirely reasonable concern given the Court\u2019s conservative majority and the fact that it gleefully overturned Roe v. Wade<\/em> in 2022<\/a>\u2014you can likely breathe easy: The consensus following Tuesday\u2019s oral arguments is that US Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine<\/em> will likely be dismissed on standing<\/a>. Not because the Court\u2019s conservatives love reproductive freedom and respect a pregnant person\u2019s right to choose, but because the case is so embarrassingly meritless<\/a>. (The plaintiffs are a group of antiabortion medical associations and doctors who don\u2019t prescribe mifepristone themselves but claim that one day they could be put in the horrible position of treating a patient who took the drug and would be irreparably scarred from the experience\u2014the doctors, not the patients.) So, that\u2019s the good news.<\/p>\n The bad, terrifying news is that archconservatives Clarence Thomas<\/strong> and Samuel Alito<\/strong>\u2014the latter of whom, in his opinion overturning Roe,<\/em> cited<\/a> a 17th-century jurist who supported marital rape and had women executed\u2014can\u2019t just dismiss the case and move on. Instead, experts fear, they plan to use FDA v.<\/em> Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine<\/em> to lay the groundwork for a future nationwide ban on medication abortions\u2014and possibly even all<\/em> abortions.<\/p>\n Per Slate<\/a>:<\/p>\n Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas are never ones to let an embarrassment of a lawsuit go to waste. And they were openly eager to embrace the chilling argument at the heart of ADF\u2019s case: the notion that the Comstock Act of 1873 prohibits the distribution of abortion pills and perhaps even equipment used for procedural abortions. Under this theory, abortion is already a criminal offense under federal law, and every abortion provider in the country may be prosecuted and imprisoned immediately. Conservative groups like the\u00a0Heritage Foundation\u00a0are already urging Trump to issue an executive order on day one banning medication abortion. Republican lawyers are preparing to use the Comstock Act to\u00a0prohibit all abortions, not just pills. This reading of the\u00a0zombie relic\u00a0is so broad\u00a0that a Justice Department and judiciary hostile enough to reproductive freedom could contort it to make all abortion care a felony.<\/p>\n Predictably on Tuesday, and with a case built of vapors to work with, Alito and Thomas went full Comstock. Alito scolded the FDA for letting providers mail abortion pills despite the existence of the law. \u201cThis is a prominent provision,\u201d the justice told [Solicitor General Elizabeth<\/strong>] Prelogar.<\/strong> \u201cIt\u2019s not some obscure subsection of a complicated, obscure law. They knew about it. Everybody in this field knew about it.\u201d Thomas warned attorney [Jessica<\/strong>] Ellsworth<\/strong> that her client, the maker of mifepristone, lacked a \u201csafe harbor\u201d from prosecution over Comstock. \u201cIt\u2019s fairly broad, and it specifically covers drugs such as yours,\u201d he told her. (That claim is\u00a0very much in dispute.) Alito and Thomas know they will likely lose this case, so they\u2019re preparing for the next one. Maybe Trump will win and commence Comstock prosecutions. Maybe [Judge Matthew<\/strong>] Kacsmaryk<\/strong> will issue a new ban on mifepristone at the behest of red states, as he is currently\u00a0threatening to do. Either way, Comstock is racing toward the Supreme Court. And two justices have already aligned themselves with a sweeping interpretation of its puritanical prohibitions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n \u201cWhen you hear the justices asking repeated questions, it\u2019s definitely something that they are interested in,\u201d Leah Litman,<\/strong> a University of Michigan law professor, told<\/a> The Washington Post,<\/em> adding that she expects Alito or Thomas to write an opinion centered on Comstock. During an interview with the Post<\/em> in May, antiabortion activist Mark Lee Dickson<\/strong> said the quiet part out loud, telling the outlet: \u201cIf a future president were to enforce these federal statutes, then they could shut down every abortion facility in America.\u201d Donald Trump<\/strong> has not commented on the Comstock Act* but groups like the Heritage Foundation, with its Project 2025, have urged<\/a> him order the FDA to overturn its approval of mifepristone. While Trump sometimes likes to pretend to be a moderate on abortion<\/a>, he also brags about killing Roe V. Wade<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n After Tuesday\u2019s oral arguments, Representative Cori Bush<\/strong> called for the repeal of Comstock, writing<\/a> on X: \u201cThe antiabortion movement wants to weaponize the Comstock Act as a quick route to a nationwide medication abortion ban. Not on our watch.\u201d<\/p>\n *Let\u2019s be honest, there’s a strong possibility he hasn\u2019t heard of it.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n