Justice Sotomayor Dissents, Too

This country’s laws have long singled out abortions for more onerous treatment than other medical procedures that carry similar or greater risks… (See Greenhouse  & Siegel, Casey and the Clinic Closings: When  “Protecting Health” Obstructs Choice”). 

Like many of those laws, maintaining the FDA’s in-person requirements for mifepristone during the pandemic not only treats abortion exceptionally, it imposes an unnecessary, irrational, and unjustifiable undue burden on women seeking to exercise their right to choose.

One can only hope that the Government will reconsider and exhibit greater care and empathy for women seeking some measure of control over their health and reproductive lives in these unsettling times. 

See Gonzales, 550 U. S.,  at 172 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (“[Women’s] ability to realize their full potential … is intimately connected to their ability to control their reproductive lives” (internal quotation marks omitted). 

For now, I respectfully dissent. 

JUSTICE SONIA SOTOMAYOR,  Dissent in FDA v. American  College of Obstetricians and  Gynecologists, January 12, 2021.