Why Republicans secretly hope the Supreme Court rules in favor of the abortion pill

On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments as anti-choice activists seek to overturn the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a drug commonly used to terminate pregnancies.

As my colleague Alex Woodward explained in his write-up of the oral arguments, even some of the conservative jurists that former president Donald Trump nominated to the bench seemed to express skepticism about reversing the FDA’s approval of mifepristone that happened in 2000.

Indeed, Justice Neil Gorsuch cast the ruling by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk last year that threw mifepristone into peril as “rash”. He added that this week’s litigation, brought by a handful of doctors opposed to abortion, would be “turning what could be a small lawsuit into a nationwide legislative assembly on an FDA rule.”

Another group of Republicans might secretly pray that the Supreme Court allows mifepristone to stay on the market: Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, House Speaker Mike Johnson — and even Trump.

On the surface, this might seem puzzling. Johnson is an ardent anti-abortion campaigner who worked for the Alliance Defending Freedom, the legal group leading the challenge to mifepristone. Trump nominated Kacsmaryk, the judge who suspended mifepristone’s FDA approval last year. And McConnell facilitated Kacsmaryk’s confirmation to the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas when Republicans controlled the Senate.

But Trump and McConnell turning the Senate into a judicial confirmation factory — indeed, McConnell got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations because of Democratic opposition to Gorsuch — has been disastrous for Republicans politically.

The Dobbs v Jackson decision overturning Roe v Wade came as a