Doctors challenging mifepristone face scrutiny over their limited experience with the abortion drug

By John Fritze and Tierney Sneed, CNN
Published 3:16 PM EDT, Mon March 25, 2024

(CNN) — The blockbuster case at the Supreme Court that could make it harder for millions of Americans to access the abortion pill mifepristone has turned almost entirely on 11 anti-abortion doctors and advocates who say their work has been upended by patients experiencing complications from the drug. … One of those doctors is also a Republican state senator in Indiana. Another claims to be an expert in an “abortion pill reversal” procedure that a leading medical group described as “unproven and unethical.” A third hasn’t been licensed to practice medicine for years.

Most of the doctors directly involved in the case, which will be heard by the Supreme Court on Tuesday, have long records advocating against abortion. None of the doctors who submitted declarations prescribe mifepristone and none have pointed to an instance when they personally were required to perform an abortion for a patient who had complications after taking the drug.

In what has emerged as the most important abortion case since the overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022, the Supreme Court is being asked whether the Food and Drug Administration overstepped its authority by making it easier to obtain mifepristone, such as by expanding who may prescribe the drug and allowing it to be dispensed through the mail.

But before the court reaches that issue, it must first decide whether the doctors and medical groups who filed the lawsuit have been harmed by the drug in a way that gives them a right to sue, a concept known as “standing.” Adam Unikowsky, a well-known Supreme Court litigator, has questioned whether the groups are even close to meeting that standard. … Much of the evidence the doctors have put forward for how mifepristone’s availability is harming them is vague, at best, and has put the case on flimsy legal footing.

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