On Dec. 13, shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would hear the appeal from the Fifth Circuit about the FDA approval of the abortion medication mifepristone, Mother Jones published an article tracing the case’s path to the high court. The article includes an excerpt from an August 2023 story quoting Professor David S. Cohen, co-author of “Abortion Pills” (forthcoming in Stanford Law Review), which was cited by the dissenting opinion in Dobbs.

The Fifth Circuit ruled that the anti-abortion doctors had waited too long to challenge mifepristone’s FDA 2000 approval—and it also found that the FDA had acted improperly in 2016 and 2021, when it relaxed some rules around how mifepristone can be prescribed.

The Fifth Circuit’s decision contains bad news for parties on both sides of the case. But because of the Supreme Court’s prior order, the ruling doesn’t have much practical effect—at least for now. “This opinion changes nothing on the ground whatsoever,” says Drexel University law professor David Cohen. “Mifepristone is available the same way today as it was yesterday.”

Professor Cohen also was quoted in a Wired article about the medication abortion case.