Yesterday, the Supreme Court issued its ruling in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine (AHM). AHM, a group of pro-life physicians, sued the FDA to restore common-sense restrictions governing the abortion drug mifepristone after the FDA effectively deregulated the drug. The FDA abolished such safeguards as requiring that the first pill of the abortion drug regimen be taken in front of a doctor – in part to ensure that abortion drugs were not taken late in pregnancy, when a live birth could result. The FDA also removed the requirement that all adverse effects of mifepristone be reported and now only requires reporting in cases where mifepristone causes death.
Pro-life physicians argue that the lack of even the most basic safeguards results in women arriving in emergency rooms with potentially life-threatening complications, including profuse bleeding, infections, and incomplete abortions. Emergency room physicians – even those who are pro-life – are then required to “finish” abortions by removing the mangled parts of partially-aborted babies, making them complicit in elective chemical abortions.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court held that the pro-life physicians did not have a direct injury sufficient to give them standing to bring the lawsuit. Justice Kavanaugh, writing for the unanimous Court, held that federal conscience laws fully protect doctors from having to perform procedures they find objectionable.
Life Legal filed an amicus brief with the Court addressing the issue of standing, arguing that individual pro-life doctors “have already sustained actual injuries because of having to treat women who are suffering from complications resulting from the taking of the abortion drugs, in violation of the doctors’ moral opposition to participating in elective abortion.” When faced with emergency situations, physicians often do not have time to seek out another doctor to provide treatment. But the Court stated that “doctors need not follow a time-intensive procedure to invoke federal conscience protections. A doctor may simply refuse.”
Regarding AHM’s claim that eliminating restrictions on abortion drugs has caused an increase in serious injuries to women that require medical attention, Justice Kavanaugh directed the physicians to “present their concerns and objections to the President and FDA in the regulatory process, or to Congress and the President in the legislative process.” But of course, it is the President and the FDA who removed the safeguards to begin with. It is absurd to think that pro-life doctors will have any influence on the regulatory process under the current administration.
The silver lining of this disappointing decision is the Court’s robust and unanimous affirmation of the right of medical professionals to refuse complicity in abortion contrary to their conscience. A legal reckoning for the FDA’s negligent and politicized deregulation of mifepristone must await another day.