Brett Kavanaugh Slipped a Big Poison Pill Into His Mifepristone Opinion

[mahatmakanejeeves]

JURISPRUDENCE
Brett Kavanaugh Slipped a Big Poison Pill Into His Mifepristone Opinion

BY DAHLIA LITHWICK AND MARK JOSEPH STERN
JUNE 13, 2024 • 5:03 PM

The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a legal assault against the most common method of abortion, unanimously holding that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue in the first place. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s opinion for the court maintains access to mifepristone, the first drug in a medication abortion, which the Food and Drug Administration approved in 2000. The plaintiffs, a group of anti-abortion doctors and dentists, argued that federal courts must ban or roll back the public’s access to mifepristone in all 50 states, presenting objectively false claims about its alleged dangers. These activists, however, will not prescribe the drug or treat patients who’ve used it—and so, the court held, they have no right to challenge its approval in court.

Yet the decision was not a total defeat for anti-abortion activists. Among other things, Kavanaugh slipped language into his opinion that could expand protections for physicians who refuse to provide emergency abortions, potentially imperiling the lives of patients. On a bonus Slate Plus episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed Kavanaugh’s concession to the anti-abortion movement. Their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

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