Even Right-Wing Justices Don’t Bite On Anti-Abortion Effort To Restrict Mifepristone Nationwide

The anti-abortion side emerged from Tuesday’s oral arguments considerably worse for wear after even their ideological allies on the bench questioned their standing to bring the case and the sweeping scope of the restrictions they sought.

At times, it became a full Court pile-on, particularly in response to the anti-abortion group’s quest for nationwide restrictions on the drug due to a handful of doctors’ objection to maybe, perhaps, one day, having to complete an abortion for a woman suffering from mifepristone’s side effects.

While the legal underpinnings of the mifepristone challenge are widely considered to be shoddy, we’ve seen the work that judges’ political preferences can do in bridging the gap to the preferred result. In this case, both Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals were willing to make that leap. The Supreme Court, based on what we heard today, seems not to be.