ROANOKE, Va. – Mifepristone, a drug used in more than 60% of U.S. abortions, will stay on the market following a Supreme Court ruling on Thursday.
Despite the ruling, women’s access to mifepristone still largely depends on a patchwork of state laws, with only about half of states allowing full access under terms approved by the federal government.
Virginia Legal Analyst Amanda Rieman does expect more litigation into the future.
“The Supreme Court Ruling didn’t consider what we call ‘the merits of the facts.’ Whether or not that pill will be restricted, we still don’t know. What this has done today is send it back to the courts without dismissing it entirely,” Rieman said.
The use of medication abortion has been rising in Virginia over the past seven years, with more than half of all abortions in the state induced with pills rather than performed by surgery in 2021.
According to data from the Virginia Department of Health, 56% of the roughly 17,000 induced terminations of pregnancy — the state’s legal term for abortion — that occurred in the state in 2021 were the result of medication.
The challenge to the drug was opposed by the pharmaceutical industry, which warned that a ruling that second-guessed the regulations for mifepristone could open the door to legal challenges targeting all sorts of medications.
Congressman Bob Good took to the social platform ‘X’ following Thursday’s decision.
“I am greatly saddened by SCOTUS’s unanimous decision on mifepristone without ruling on the merits of the case. The Democrats put their radical desire to promote abortion over the harmful effects of the drug on women’s health, and hundreds of thousands of precious unborn children,” Good’s post read.
Democrats also posted statements online including Sen. Mark Warner.
“This is welcome news for access to a safe, tested medication. Let’s be clear, though: reproductive freedom is still very much under attack. We need to pass robust protections for IVF, birth control, and abortion,” Warner said in his post.
Access to the pills is restricted across large swaths of the country because of state laws that ban abortion (including medication abortion) outright or impose separate restrictions on the drug’s use.
About half of U.S. states allows online prescribing and mail delivery of mifepristone, conforming to FDA’s drug label.