The Food and Drug Administration bent the rules by expanding access to mifepristone, an abortion pill that can be taken at home without a doctor’s supervision or even a prescription. The FDA was able to get away with this by classifying the pill as Subpart H — meds used to treat illness.

Pro-life doctors and organizations called out the FDA and took their complaints all the way to the Supreme Court. Pregnancy, they said, is not a disease but a “normal physiological state that many females experience one or more times during their childbearing years.” The plaintiffs also highlighted the risk of elevated emergency room visits for women suffering from complications, as well as the risk to doctors via potential malpractice suits.

Sadly, albeit understandably, their case was thrown out.

The unanimous opinion, written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, explains that the doctors bringing the suit didn’t have sufficient standing to have brought the case in the first place. As Kavanaugh explains, “There would be no principled way to cabin such a sweeping doctrinal change to doctors or other healthcare providers. That path would seemingly not end until virtually every citizen had standing to challenge virtually every government action that they do not like.”

In other words, the pro-lifers failed to establish that they had a direct stake in the FDA’s expanded access to these abortion pills. Ergo, since they are not patients who would be affected by them, they cannot bring a complaint. The Wall Street Journal quipped, “So much for the left’s denunciations of the Court as ‘Christian Nationalist.’”

To paraphrase Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice, the justices deserve neither such praise nor such censure. They are simply following the law, which is their role and their duty.

While the ruling was disappointing, certain clear provisions and positions reassure those fighting to keep these drugs out of their states. The opinion posits very clearly and without dissent that doctors cannot be forced to prescribe these pills. If a doctor’s rights of conscience are violated, then they have standing to sue.

Erin Hawley with Alliance Defending Freedom commented, “Nothing in today’s decision changes the fact that the FDA’s own label says that roughly one in 25 women who take chemical abortion drugs will end up in the emergency room — a dangerous reality the doctors and medical associations we represent in this case know all too well.”

Abortion pills are deadly for the baby, which is terrible enough, but they also pose a danger to the mother. A mother, it should be stated, who is likely already attempting to go through with an abortion without medical support.

The use of mifepristone has risen steadily, with as many as two-thirds of abortions being committed via this method, according to the Guttmacher Institute. What’s interesting, though, is that because of the pill’s prevalence as an abortion mechanism, organizations are now feeling free to admit what a dangerous and horrible procedure surgical abortions are.

This decision — which was touted as SCOTUS shooting down the opportunity to weigh in on abortion pills and their regulation — garnered a newfound respect from the Left. “The View’s” Sunny Hostin, who purports to be pro-life and a Catholic, said this ruling restores her faith in the Court.

As for Joe “Good Catholic” Biden, his opinion on the decision was that it “does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.” So much for our devout Catholic president.

This particular ruling may come up in the larger political debate in the ensuing months. As the November election draws nearer, Democrats are desperately trying to make 2024 about abortion, IVF, and women’s “reproductive rights.” Anything to distract from Biden’s economic malaise, failed foreign policy, and wide-open borders. It’s a ploy that seemed to help them in the midterms, and only time will tell if this will hold true in November.