Ramaswamy says Supreme Court should overturn FDA approval of abortion pill

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said he thinks the Supreme Court should overturn the Food and Drug Administration's approval of the abortion drug mifepristone, arguing that the agency "exceeded" its authority when approving the drug in 2000. 

Ramaswamy's comments Wednesday came after the Supreme Court earlier that day said it would hear a case on whether to restrict access to mifepristone, which is used in conjunction with another drug to induce abortions, making it one of the most common abortion methods in the U.S.

"The FDA exceeded its statutory authority in using an emergency approval to approve something that doesn't fit Congress' criteria for what actually counts as an emergency approval," Ramaswamy said at a CNN Town Hall. "I hope they follow the law. I hope that's where they come down."

Ramaswamy also argued that the case is not about abortion but "about administrative law," and he compared it to West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, which he called "the most important Supreme Court case of our lifetime." In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that if Congress did not expressly give an agency the right to create a regulation, then the agency has no right to create that regulation. 

However, the question presented to the Supreme Court by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which is against mifepristone, is not about emergency approval, which the FDA typically gives to important time-sensitive drugs such as the COVID-19 vaccine, but they are asking whether doctors and medical associations have the standing to challenge an agency's removal of drug safeguards, such as how the FDA in 2021 made it so women could obtain mail-order abortions without an in-person doctor's visit. The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine is also asking the court to decide whether the lower court correctly required the FDA to explain its decisions to remove safeguards surrounding the drug. 

Mifepristone has been under scrutiny before, with 20 Republican senators in 2020 asking then-Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Stephen Hahn to take the drug off the market over health concerns. 

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