A Supreme Court bitterly divided two years ago over the right to an abortion appeared to find something close to unity Tuesday, as conservative and liberal justices took turns picking apart arguments of a small group of anti-abortion doctors seeking to roll back access to the widely-used abort drug mifepristone, USA Today reports. If lawyers for the group expected kid gloves from the court’s dominant conservative wing, they may have left Tuesday's arguments feeling bruised. Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee who voted in 2022 to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion, groused that “a handful of individuals” were trying to make health policy for the U.S. The case, Gorsuch said, “seems like a prime example of turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule or any other federal government action.”
Tuesday’s arguments were a big speed bump for a critical abortion case that had so far sailed through lower courts with key arguments intact. The case sent shockwaves across the medical and legal worlds last year when a Trump-appointed judge in Amarillo, Tex., suspended the FDA’s 20-year-old approval of mifepristone. The right-leaning 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in Louisiana restored the FDA's approval but upheld other parts of his decision – setting the stage for a high court showdown that saw strident anti-abortion and abortion rights protesters facing off on the streets outside. The hearing generated intense interest because the doctors have sought to use the Comstock Act, a 19th century anti-obscenity law, to ban the delivery of mifepristone by mail. With the exception of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the court mostly ignored the 1873 law and focused on the anti-abortion doctors.
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