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Page Number: 18.0

14 

FDA v. ALLIANCE FOR HIPPOCRATIC MEDICINE 

Opinion of the Court 

downstream economic injuries to the doctors.  The third set 
of  causation  theories  maintains  that  FDA’s  relaxed 
regulation  of  mifepristone  causes  injuries  to  the  medical 
associations 
own 
organizational  standing.  As  we  will  explain,  none  of  the 
theories suffices to establish Article III standing. 

themselves,  who 

assert 

their 

1 

We first address the plaintiffs’ claim that FDA’s relaxed 
regulation of mifepristone causes conscience injuries to the 
doctors. 

The  doctors  contend  that  FDA’s  2016  and  2021  actions 
will  cause  more  pregnant  women  to  suffer  complications
from mifepristone, and those women in turn will need more 
emergency abortions by doctors.  The plaintiff doctors say
that  they  therefore  may  be  required—against  their 
consciences—to  render  emergency  treatment  completing 
the  abortions  or  providing  other  abortion-related 
treatment. 

The  Government  correctly  acknowledges 

that  a 
conscience injury of that kind constitutes a concrete injury 
in fact for purposes of Article III.  See Tr. of Oral Arg. 11–
12; TransUnion, 594 U. S., at 425; see, e.g., Holt v. Hobbs, 
574  U. S.  352  (2015).    So  doctors  would  have  standing  to
challenge a government action that likely would cause them
to provide medical treatment against their consciences. 

But in this case—even assuming for the sake of argument 
that  FDA’s  2016  and  2021  changes  to  mifepristone’s
conditions  of  use  cause  more  pregnant  women  to  require 
emergency  abortions  and  that  some  women  would  likely 
seek  treatment  from  these  plaintiff  doctors—the  plaintiff 
doctors  have  not  shown  that  they  could  be  forced  to
participate  in  an  abortion  or  provide  abortion-related
medical treatment over their conscience objections.

That  is  because,  as  the  Government  explains,  federal 
conscience  laws  definitively  protect  doctors  from  being