News broke Wednesday that the Supreme Court will hear arguments about a lower court decision that curtailed the use of mifepristone, an abortion pill that accounts for more than half of all abortions carried out in the United States. Mifepristone is administered at abortion facilities and is also available via mail order. 

SCOTUS will be reviewing an appeals court decision from August that put limits on the availability of mifepristone, ruling that the Food and Drug Administration failed to adequately address safety concerns about the drug when it loosened regulations on it in 2016. Here's a bit more about how the pill works:

Mifepristone works by cutting off the nutrients necessary for an unborn baby to survive, essentially starving the child to death. A second pill called misoprostol is then ingested to induce contractions to expel the dead baby from the womb.

As RedState reported earlier this year, the matter at stake is a lawsuit brought against the FDA by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which argued that the FDA did not take proper measures to ensure the safety of women using mifepristone. Use of the drug skyrocketed during the pandemic, with many women self-administering the abortifacient on their own at home. The FDA actually relaxed its own Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy requirements in 2020 in order to send more mifepristone into American homes, meaning women could obtain the pill without ever seeing a clinician or taking a pregnancy test.

In its haste to get more abortion pills into the hands of American women, it's being argued, the federal government failed to take into account the safety of those women. This is further proven by the FDA's willingness to gut its own safety requirements during the pandemic, which put untold numbers of women at risk.

So much for safe, legal, and rare.

Erin Hawley, senior counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, which is representing the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, said of SCOTUS' decision to hear arguments in the case: “Every court so far has agreed that the FDA acted unlawfully in removing common-sense safeguards for women and authorizing dangerous mail-order abortions. We urge the Supreme Court to do the same.”

News of SCOTUS considering this case comes as Republicans face another abortion test in the form of the National Defense Authorization Act, which is expected to be passed by the Senate on Wednesday and advance to the House for a vote by the end of this week. Supporting the NDAA means also supporting the Biden administration policy of using taxpayer money to pay the travel expenses of active duty military members or their spouses when seeking abortions. 

SCOTUS agrees to hear mifepristone case in the same week some Congressional Republicans may vote to uphold the illegal DOD abortion travel policy. NO Republican should support this bad NDAA deal.https://t.co/MITPoviBuo

— Congressman Bob Good (@RepBobGood) December 13, 2023

Democrats have not been subtle about their intent to make the 2024 elections all about abortion. They are incensed over the Dobbs decision to remand the abortion issue back to the states; they know this is a red meat issue for their base, and they will be relentless in their attacks. For their part, Republicans seem to be struggling with their pro-life messaging, with the presidential candidates failing to coalesce around a strategy for putting the Democrats on defense. 

Arguments in this new abortion case are expected to take place sometime in the spring of 2024.