By Renee K. Carlson, General Counsel, True North Legal
Just yesterday in a unanimous decision in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine which includes pro-life doctors and other pro-life organizations lacked Article III standing, the legal requisite necessary for the Court to decide the case on the merits — the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) unlawful regulatory actions regarding the dangerous abortion drug mifepristone. Thus, at least for now, the FDA will not be held accountable for unlawfully removing many common sense health and safety standards for high-risk abortion drugs such as: simply requiring an in person doctor visit for prescribing this dangerous abortion drug, reporting requirements, and making the high-risk abortion drug available for women and girls via tele-health. So perilous chemical abortions will remain available under the FDA’s expanded access to mifepristone without many common sense guardrails for the abortion drug.
One practical implication of the abortion industry’s reckless disregard for safety is the lack of screening for prior complications like ectopic pregnancy and other pregnancy related conditions which puts women in danger and serious risk of medical complications. This is not hyperbole. When I spoke at the U.S. Supreme Court back in March of this year in support of the plaintiffs and pro-life doctors in this case, I heard heart wrenching stories of women and girls taking these drugs — left alone to perform their own abortions on a cold chilled bathroom floor. Some women shared that the emotional distress of being left along while losing a child was even more damaging than the physical suffering induced by medical complications of abortion drugs.
To be clear, abortion is not healthcare! Our amicus brief in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the U.S. Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade, catalogues the lies and harms that the abortion industry has perpetrated against women and girls for nearly half a century. To that point, yesterday’s U.S. Supreme Court decision does not change the fact that according to the FDA’s own label, one in twenty-five women who choose to take dangerous abortion drugs like mifepristone will end up in the emergency room due to medical complications. The abortion industry must come clean for its culpability of harming women and girls by refusing to be transparent about the risks of taking abortion drugs. It should not take a U.S. Supreme Court decision to compel their honesty.
However, the Court was very clear that “federal conscience laws definitely protect doctors from being required to perform abortions or to provide other treatment that violates their consciences.” (emphasis added). Thus implying conscience protections beyond the abortion context. Even more specifically, the Court stated that “EMTALA does not require doctors to perform abortions or provide abortion-related medical treatment over their conscience objections…” In other words, a physician cannot be compelled to abandon their oath to do no harm or be forced to violate their conscience. Based on this statement we have much hope as we anticipate another significant U.S. Supreme Court decision by the end of June in Idaho v. United States. (True North Legal and Kansas Family Foundation submitted an amicus brief in this case, read it here.) In this case, Idaho passed the Defense of Life Act, making nearly all elective abortions illegal in the state of Idaho. In applying a novel interpretation of a federal law that has been on the books for forty years, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), the Biden administration now claims this law forces emergency room doctors to perform abortions and overrides state laws like Idaho’s Defense of Life Act. This, despite the Court’s clear precedent in Dobbs that abortion decisions are now left to the states to decide.
Despite our disappointment in this decision, I am just as encouraged if not more so about the pro-life movement than I was the on March 24, 2024, when I spoke about our pro-life movement at the U.S. Supreme Court. As I shared in my rally speech, our movement is bigger than one day at the U.S.Supreme Court. Across the nation and in Minnesota, I know that the abortion industry will never outmatch our our love, our courage, and our support for women, girls, and preborn children. All hope is not lost! In the words of the great prophet Jeremiah, “The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him.” Lamentations 3:25. Let us be people that seek the Lord and in turn point others to healing and hope in Christ, like women and girls who have been duped by the abortion industry.