Cambridge, MA, June 13, 2024 –Today, the Supreme Court of the United States released a unanimous opinion for the case Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, ruling that the opinions of the plaintiffs—a group of anti-abortion physicians—do not give them legal standing to challenge the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) regulation of mifepristone and limit others’ access to proven and effective medications. The ruling upholds the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone and subsequent updates to its label to ease access to this safe, effective, and well-studied medication. Mifepristone remains available across the country and no changes will be made to current guidelines for dispensation, including those that allow patients to receive the medication by mail.
Kelly Blanchard, president of Ibis Reproductive Health, released the following statement in response to this decision:
While this case should never have seen the inside of a courtroom, we are heartened that the Justices of the Supreme Court affirmed the FDA’s scientific judgment and let the overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone speak for itself. Judges should never allow political views to override rigorous scientific evidence, and today the Supreme Court made this clear.
This decision affirms the decades of scientific and clinical evidence demonstrating the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone for medication abortion, and we hope it will serve as an example of the importance of following the science and upholding evidence-based protocols like the FDA’s rigorous scientific review process. Medication abortion—with mifepristone and misoprostol, or with misoprostol only—is safe, effective, and a critical part of reproductive healthcare.
Unfortunately, this case has already created confusion and fear for people who need abortions, as well as for providers of abortion care, adding to the ongoing public health crisis created by the 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. This case was just the latest attack in a larger political agenda to ban abortion nationwide and to take away essential health care from our communities, especially for those who already face added barriers to care and systemic oppression in our current health care system, including Black people, Indigenous peoples, AANHPI and Latine people, LGTBQ+ people, people with disabilities, immigrants, those working to make ends meet, and people living in geographically isolated areas.
We call on policymakers to counteract these attacks by lifting up accurate, evidence-based information about the safety and availability of mifepristone across the United States and continuing to work to improve access to the full range of reproductive health care options, from abortion to contraception to gender-affirming care.
At Ibis, we remain committed to continuing our work to ensure that everyone can access the health care they need to exercise their right to bodily autonomy. We are relieved that mifepristone remains accessible in the United States, and we also know that increasing the options abortion seekers can choose from is one way to address the ongoing barriers to abortion access nationwide. This means not only ensuring access to the combined regimen of mifepristone and misoprostol, but also ensuring that the misoprostol-only medication abortion regimen—which our data have shown is highly effective, and more effective than previously thought—is accessible and available for those who want that option in the United States.
There are two WHO-recommended regimens for medication abortion: mifepristone in combination with misoprostol, and misoprostol on its own. For more information about the safety and effectiveness of misoprostol-only medication abortion and its potential to protect and expand access to medication abortion, please see our resource hub.