After gorging themselves on the basic autonomous rights of 168 million women through the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court is looking for its next meal: chemical abortions.
Just this week, our nation’s highest court agreed to review a lower-court ruling to restrict the accessibility of mifepristone, a Food and Drug Administration-approved abortion pill used by over five million American women. If the justices uphold the lower-court’s decision, which is likely due to the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, the repercussions will echo through the lives of all Americans, not just women.
Filed last November by anti-abortion medical organizations and doctors, this obvious attack on reproductive rights was hidden under the guise of concern for the health and safety of patients. In a statement solidifying their stance, Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative Christian legal advocacy group representing the challenge to the FDA, said that “the FDA has harmed the health of women and undermined the rule of law by illegally removing every meaningful safeguard from the chemical abortion drug regimen.”
However, these FDA-approved changes—extending pill consumption from seven weeks to 10 weeks and switching from in-person to mailing dispensing requirements—are not without careful medical consideration. Many studies have shown the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone. In fact, of the 5 million women who have taken the drug mifepristone to end a pregnancy, less than one percent have resulted in hospitalization. If these medical organizations were so concerned about the health and safety of pregnant women, it seems odd that they would try to eliminate access to the safest, easiest, and most common form of contraception without statistically significant evidence.
However, if the court upholds the restriction on mifepristone, the reproductive health and freedom of women will not be the only thing at stake. At face value, this may seem like just another abortion debate, but a restriction on mifepristone cuts deep for everyone, regardless of whether you are pro-life or pro-choice. For every American, upholding a restriction on mifepristone means an increase in political power for groups that don’t have the patients’ best interests in mind. It means a transfer of scientific authority from experts to political machines. It means the devaluation of an FDA certification.
The FDA must be protected from the ebbs and flows of political pressure because, without a strong agency in which the American public can place their trust, scientific authority may fall into the wrong hands. If we’re not careful, our scientific standards will not be created by medical school graduates, but by religious organizations.
