Kansas City Star
Kansas, Missouri to keep fighting abortion drug after Supreme Court upholds access to it

Jonathan Shorman, Daniel Desrochers
Thu, June 13, 2024 at 12:57 p.m. EDT · 4 min read

Attorneys general for Kansas and Missouri on Thursday vowed to push forward with their legal challenge of a common abortion medication, minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a group of doctors couldn’t sue to ban the drug.

The Supreme Court’s decision upheld, for now, nationwide access to mifepristone, one of two medications frequently used in abortions. In a unanimous decision, the high court found the doctors who had sued in federal court in Texas, challenging the FDA’s decades-old approval of the drug, lacked standing to bring a lawsuit. ... But Missouri and Kansas in January convinced a federal judge to allow the states, along with Idaho, to intervene in the lawsuit. The decision allows the states to potentially keep the legal challenge alive, by arguing that they – unlike the doctors – have standing to sue. ... “We are moving forward undeterred with our litigation to protect both women and their unborn children,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican, said in a statement. ... Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach, a Republican, said in a statement the states “possess the standing that the doctors did not.” ... “It is essential that this case continue in order to ensure that the FDA operates within the law,” Kobach said.

A continuing legal challenge of mifepristone could bring seismic implications for abortion access in the United States. Since the Supreme Court ended the federal right to an abortion in 2022, more than a dozen states, including Missouri, have enacted total or near-total bans. The medication, which can be taken across state lines, have offered some individuals a way to access abortion despite state-level bans.

Even in states where abortion is legal, the medication plays a critical role. If mifepristone’s federal approval were rescinded, abortion access could be dramatically curtailed and more individuals would be forced to seek surgical abortions, straining clinics. Abortion medications were used in about 63% of all abortions in 2023, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights.

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