Despite what many of the headlines claimed, the recent Supreme Court decision on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval and expansion of abortion pills had nothing to do with abortion pills or their availability — or their safety for women, or the risks in prescribing them without an in-person physician visit. 

The case brought before the Court has a long and somewhat-complex legal history. But the Supreme Court did not address any of those issues in its ruling last week. 

The ruling was quite narrow and addressed only one thing: standing. The holding from the Court’s opinion reads simply: “Held: Plaintiffs lack Article III standing to challenge the FDA’s actions regarding the regulation of mifepristone.” 

You have likely heard the term “standing” in any variety of circumstances. “He’s not in good standing with the Church” is a phrase occasionally used to describe a Catholic in an irregular marriage situation. In a civil-law context, “standing” refers to the capacity or ability of one party to bring another party to court. Standing does not refer to the issue of the lawsuit itself, no matter how hotly contested it is, but rather who has the right to bring a lawsuit in the first place. 

In federal law, in order to bring an issue before a court, the plaintiff (the person or party bringing a lawsuit) must have suffered an “injury in fact” — an actual or imminent harm caused to the plaintiff by the person or party being sued. There must exist some type of connection, one that is “causal” in nature, between the injury to the plaintiff and the conduct on which he or she wants the court to rule. Finally, a favorable decision by the court must foreseeably address the injury brought by the party bringing the suit. 

There are good prudential and public-policy reasons to make certain that a party challenging a law or regulation has the standing to do so. 

First, not every argument, regardless of merit, has the right to be heard in a federal court. Requiring plaintiffs to have sufficient personal or institutional interest in a matter makes certain that the court’s time will be relegated only to the issues directly related to its responsibilities and citizens who are actually being harmed. Those bringing the lawsuit must have a vested interest and be presently faced with a real, tangible harm if the court does not rule in their favor. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who authored the court’s unanimous opinion, summed standing up well by quoting his late former colleague Antonin Scalia, “As Justice Scalia memorably said, Article III [of the United States Constitution] requires a plaintiff to first answer a basic question: “What’s it to you?”

“For a plaintiff to get in the federal courthouse door and obtain a judicial determination of what governing law is,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the plaintiff cannot be a mere bystander, but instead must have a personal stake in the dispute.”

Moreover, Kavanaugh noted, “the requirement that the plaintiff possess a personal stake helps ensure the courts decide litigants’ legal rights in specific cases, as Article III requires, and that courts do not opine on legal issues in response to citizens who might ‘roam the country in search of governmental wrongdoing.’” 

The challengers in the FDA abortion-pill case were the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, and doctors Shaun Jester, Regina Frost-Clark, Tyler Johnson and George Delgado, in their individual roles as physicians.

Although both the federal district court and appellate court that heard the case ruled the plaintiffs had the necessary standing, the Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. Kavanaugh wrote that the connection the medical associations and doctors had to the FDA’s relaxation on the abortion pill’s use was simply too remote to give them the necessary standing to bring the lawsuit. 

“Here, the plaintiff doctors and medical associations are unregulated parties who seek to challenge FDA’s regulation of others. Specifically, FDA’s regulations apply to doctors prescribing mifepristone and to pregnant women taking mifepristone. But plaintiff doctors and medical associations do not prescribe or use mifepristone. And FDA has not required the plaintiffs to do anything or refrain from doing anything,” the opinion explained. 

It is both ironic and frustrating that, as pro-life legal scholars have pointed out, for decades, abortion businesses and abortion providers challenged legal protections for unborn children on behalf of potential or future clients. It does seem that a double standard is at work when the Supreme Court agrees with the FDA and the abortion pills’ manufacturer regarding physicians who work in emergency rooms — and therefore may very well care for patients with pill-related complications — being barred from objecting to what many believe is reckless medicine. Although federal conscious-protection laws do indeed protect pro-life physicians from participating directly in abortion provision, emergency situations related to the use of mifepristone can and do occur, requiring immediate participation from otherwise objecting doctors. 

Nevertheless, while the outcome was entirely expected, there remains a silver lining in the cloud of the Supreme Court’s 9-0 ruling. Because it was written so narrowly, and did not reach the merits of the case (the FDA’s relaxation of regulations on how the abortion pill is used and prescribed), there is a strong possibility for another lawsuit featuring different plaintiffs, perhaps coming from states like Kansas or Missouri. 

In the meantime, pro-life organizations have a new opportunity to educate the public on the pill’s potential harms to pregnant women and potential for abuse and illegal misuse. With misinformation operating in overtime, it remains critical that women are aware of the risks to their physical and mental health from mifepristone. An educated public remains the best defense against the FDA’s reckless actions.