Supreme Court Abortion Pill Case Draws Women Out To Fight. Again.

WASHINGTON ― Inside the Supreme Court on Tuesday, justices seemed to wonder why they were hearing a case about blocking distribution of medication abortion.

Outside the court, plenty of others were wondering how they ended up here again, on the steps of the court, fighting to protect women’s reproductive rights. Again.

“I’m 70 years old and we were talking about this when I was in college, and that’s insane to me. That, you know, 50 years later we are still fighting this fight,” said Jane Amgarola, a retired educator from Washington, D.C.

“It’s getting, you know, closer and closer to Handmaid’s Tale,” she added.

Susan, an 85-year-old woman from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, said she’s been fighting for women’s and civil rights for decades, and Tuesday’s protest at the court felt like yet another round. She was even at the 1963 March on Washington with Martin Luther King Jr.

Only one thing feels different from that day, said Susan, who asked to go by her first name.

“It’s colder now,” she said.

Hundreds of abortion rights supporters gathered outside the court as justices weighed arguments in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a case brought by conservative groups arguing that the Food and Drug Administration has too loosely regulated mifepristone, one of two drugs used in medication abortion.

The FDA firstapproved mifepristone in 2000 and says it has since been used safely by nearly six million people in the U.S. Central to the case are changes to the regulations passed by the FDA in recent years easing restrictions, including allowing it to be prescribed by telemedicine and distributed by mail.

Reproductive rights advocates showed up with their signs, their shirts with messages on them, their megaphones and