Who has the legal right to challenge decisions by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration? And should the moral umbrage of a group of anti-abortion rights doctors shift policy across the country, limiting women’s ability to get the widely used abortion drug mifepristone?

These are a few of the central questions that the Supreme Court fielded on March 26, 2024, during the oral arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. A group of doctors is challenging the FDA, saying that the federal agency’s decision allowing people to get mifepristone via telehealth, at up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, is causing some medical professionals harm.

Amy Lieberman, politics and society editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with family law and reproductive justice scholars Naomi Cahn and Sonia Suter to better understand what’s behind the oral arguments before the Supreme Court – and how the court’s eventual decision, expected in June, could affect people’s ability to get abortions by using mifepristone, one of two drugs used for medication abortion.

Citation
Naomi R. Cahn & Sonia Suter, Abortion drug access could be limited by Supreme Court − if the court decides anti-abortion doctors can, in fact, challenge the FDA, The Conversation (March 26, 2024).