“It would be foolish to declare victory” for abortion rights, one expert says of the recent Supreme Court challenge to medication abortion access
Demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, D.C. on March 26, 2024. The Court ruled in favor of preserving access to the abortion pill last week.Reproductive rights supporters celebrated last week when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled to dismiss a case challenging the approval of the widely used. Though the ruling preserved medication abortion access for millions of Americans, it left the door open to future challenges by lower courts and state legislatures.
“It was pretty obvious they did not have standing,” says Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in reproduction, health care and conservatism in the U.S. “The arguments were extraordinarily bad. It’s a little bit revealing that this case even made it to the Supreme Court.”
But the ruling leaves room for future cases that could be brought by someone who might be deemed to qualify for standing. Ziegler says the Supreme Court has a very broad interpretation of federal conscience protections, which prevent doctors from having to perform abortions or other procedures that violate their personal moral views. So a doctor could theoretically bring a case arguing that they had been harmed by being forced to provide abortion care that went against their conscience.
Ziegler thinks the Supreme Court is likely to rule in Idaho’s favor. The state’s law bans all abortions except ones to save the life of the pregnant person. While that would seem to be in accord with federal law, the Biden administration is arguing that the law requires hospitals to provide treatment not just to save a person’s life but also to preserve their health.
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