--- title: Supreme Court Seems Concerned About Whether Abortion Opponents Have Right to Sue Over Mifepristone | TIME description: The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to preserve access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion case since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. canonical: https://time.com/video/OhIasZKP/ og:title: Supreme Court Seems Concerned About Whether Abortion Opponents Have Right to Sue Over Mifepristone og:description: The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to preserve access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion case since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. og:url: https://time.com/video/OhIasZKP/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/OhIasZKP/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Supreme Court Seems Concerned About Whether Abortion Opponents Have Right to Sue Over Mifepristone twitter:description: The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to preserve access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion case since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/OhIasZKP/poster.jpg?width=720 --- * U.S. # Supreme Court Seems Concerned About Whether Abortion Opponents Have Right to Sue Over Mifepristone > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: Supreme Court Seems Concerned About Whether Abortion Opponents Have Right to Sue Over Mifepristone [Watch (HLS stream): Supreme Court Seems Concerned About Whether Abortion Opponents Have Right to Sue Over Mifepristone](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/OhIasZKP.m3u8) (6:45)  _Published 2024-03-26. The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to preserve access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion case since conservative justices overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago._ --- Mar 27, 2024 1:08 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Supreme Court Unanimously Strikes Down Challenge to Abortion Drug Mifepristone](/video/Dzk4IIPq/) ### Supreme Court Unanimously Strikes Down Challenge to Abortion Drug Mifepristone [Supreme Court to Decide Fate of Access to Abortion Pill Mifepristone](/video/wwM723zp/) ### Supreme Court to Decide Fate of Access to Abortion Pill Mifepristone [Know Right Now: Supreme Court to Hear Major Abortion Rights Case](/video/TbywCBTv/) ### Know Right Now: Supreme Court to Hear Major Abortion Rights Case --- ## Transcript We will hear argument this morning in case 23 to 35 the Food and Drug Administration versus Alliance for Hippocratic medicine and the Consolidated case and may it please the court FDA approved method for stone based on the agency scientific judgment that the drug is safe and effective. It's maintained that judgment across five presidential Administration and millions of Americans have use Mitha Prestone to safely in their pregnancies respondents may not agree with that choice, but that doesn't give them article freestanding or legal basis to up in the regulatory scheme happy out that respondents lack standing they now can see if they can't rely on his physical theory of injury. Like the lower Court's did and said they have to identify a specific Doctor Who faces imminent harm, but their theories rest on a long chain of remote contingencies only an exceptionally small number of women suffer the kind of serious complications that could trigger any need for emergency treatment is secular. Any of those women with seat care from the two specific doctors who asserted conscience injuries and even if that happened Federal conscience protections would guard against the injury the doctor's face and there's no basis to conclude that any of that would be traceable to the incremental changes that FDA made in 2016 and 2021 as opposed to the availability of mifeprex stone in general responds. Theories are to attenuated as a man. I don't lock the court should say so and put it into this case. The releaf center the low with severely disrupt the federal system for developing and improving drugs calling the agency and the pharmaceutical industry. It would also inflict great harm on women Across the Nation rolling back at the exchanges would unnecessarily restrict access to Method christone with no safety justification. Some woman could be forced to undergo more invasive surgical abortions others might not be able to access the drug at all. And all of this would happen at the request of plaintiffs who have no certain injury of their own the court should reject that profoundly inequitable results. If we agree with you on standing could you give us an example of who would have standing to channel to challenge these Dia actions as a general matter? We've seen lawsuits in the past that are brought by for example, prescribing Physicians or patients who want greater access to a drug on sometimes we've seen theories. Competitor standing where a competing drug manufacturer might Sue and claimed that the eighth approval of a drug-free. It's a competitive harm or and or injury in that sense. You know, Justin Thomas. I think that if the question is whether there would be individuals who generally oppose abortion who would have standing and want to challenge at the eighth actions the answer to that is no but the reason is because those people aren't regulated in any relevant way under at the eight deficiency. Are we all do we have to comply with it? But your argument here is that even if the FDA acted unlawfully, nobody can challenge that in court and that's basically the argument you made last week right in the Murphy case. We shouldn't get to the question whether the White House and others violated the right to freedom of speech. We should just say well these plaintiffs can't bring suit we are looking at the specific respondents in this case and their theories of standing we don't think they come within a hundred miles. Have the kind of circumstances this court has previously identified of non-speculative harm that can create the kind of cognisable injury for forward-looking belief or argument is that the fda's actions and approving the Kristen. Is it between 2016 and 2021 in it? If you're looking at that which was an incremental change is so far Upstream of the downstream assertion of harm or distress that the respondents her a certain that there is just as a matter of Law and attenuated link here that came out 25 for article 3 jurisdiction problem with all drugs, who's there are complications in virtually all of them at what level the cost-benefit analysis tells you to stop prescribing. Something is a very difficult question, isn't it? And that's a question. I entrusted to FDA here whatever the statistical increase was FDA determined under the room standards that it wasn't sufficient. To create a risk that counterbalance the need for Access correct way of sources of data to conclude that on balance be burdens were suggested that it was not necessary to keep this restriction in place to ensure safe use the snatch in this case between the claimed injury and the remedy that's being soft and that that might or should matter for standing purposes. I don't know that our doctrines capture this but I guess I see it that the injuries that the respondents allege as you've articulated them our conscience and injury that they are being forced to participate in a medical procedure that they object to and so the obvious Common Sense remedy would be to provide them with an exemption that they Have to participate in this procedure and you say and he said here several times that federal law already gives them that so I guess then what they're asking for in this lawsuit is is more than they're saying because we object to having to be forced to participate in this procedure. We're seeking an order preventing anyone from having access to these drugs at all. And I guess I'm just trying to understand how they could possibly be entitled to that given the injury that they have alleged. I agree Justice Jackson and I do think it's relevant to standings. There's a profound mismatched here between the claim injury and the remedy they were seeking and even you can almost think of this as a type of zone of Interest kind of analysis, you know, if the doctor is have a conscience injury, there's a specific that you designed to deal with it to specifically TaylorMade guard against the risk of that is reoccurring and instead they're reaching out and seeking to invoke rights under a different statue at the fdca that doesn't regulate them at all. It doesn't make them do or not do anything and the beliefs that they're seeking would dramatically alter the approved conditions of used for mythical Stone and affect women all around the nation simply because of this concentrate. It's already directly addressed by other protected if it wasn't if it wasn't addressed and we would see this lawsuit and the remedy would be to exempt them. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Supreme Court Seems Concerned About Whether Abortion Opponents Have Right to Sue Over Mifepristone","description":"The Supreme Court on Tuesday seemed likely to preserve access to a medication that was used in nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion case since conservative justices overturned Roe v. 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