The abortion opponents who are seeking to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone point to three studies by Gynuity Health Projects, a New York-based women’s health research group, to back up their arguments that it is unsafe despite its regulatory approval decades ago.
But the way the research has been prominently cited by the plaintiffs in their bid to limit how the pill is prescribed and distributed is bewildering to Dr. Beverly Winikoff, Gynuity’s president, given that the conclusions broadly support easier access to the medication.
“They live on a different planet,” Winikoff said of the plaintiffs during an interview at her Midtown Manhattan office. “You can always distort information and say things that aren’t true.”
The Supreme Court, whose conservative majority in 2022 overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had recognized a constitutional right to abortion, is set to hear arguments in the case on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden’s administration is appealing a lower court’s decision that would roll back U.S. Food and Drug Administration actions in 2016 and 2021 to ease access to mifepristone. A ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could undercut federal regulatory authority over drug safety beyond just this medication.
The plaintiffs defend how they presented the research findings.
“We simply took the FDA’s characterizations of these studies and presented them to the court,” said Erik Baptist, a lawyer at the Alliance Defending Freedom conservative religious rights group representing the plaintiffs.
Mifepristone is taken with another drug called misoprostol to perform medication abortions, which account for more than 60% of U.S. abortions.