United States Supreme Court has rejected a bid seeking for the restriction of an abortion pill, “mifepristone” widely used to terminate pregnancies.
On Thursday, the court in a unanimous opinion, said the anti-abortion groups and physicians challenging the medication, mifepristone, lacked the legal standing to bring the case.
The Judge presiding over the case, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said, “We recognize that many citizens, including the plaintiff doctors here, have sincere concerns about and objections to others using mifepristone and obtaining abortions.
“But citizens and doctors do not have standing to sue simply because others are allowed to engage in certain activities,” Kavanaugh said. “The plaintiffs lack standing to challenge FDA’s actions,” he added.
The conservative justice said the federal courts were “the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions” and they could present their objections through regulatory procedures or through the “political and electoral processes.”
Abortion rights was one of the key issues in the November election and the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden had urged the court to maintain access to the drug, which was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000. His opponent Donald Trump leads a Republican Party broadly favoring blocks to abortion access.
The mifepristone case was the first significant abortion case heard by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court since it overturned the previously long-held constitutional right to abortion two years ago.
AFP
