A lawsuit from Christian conservatives aims at overturning the FDA's more than 2-decade-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
The Alliance for Defending Freedom was also involved in the lawsuit that led the Supreme Court to overturn Roe and return decisions on abortion to the states. Removing mifepristone from the market would curtail access to abortion even in states where it’s legal.
Mifepristone is part of a two-drug regimen that has been the standard for medication abortion in the U.S since 2000. If mifepristone is sidelined, clinics and doctors that prescribe the combination say they plan to switch to using only the second drug, misoprostol. That single-drug approach is slightly less effective at ending pregnancies, although it is widely used in countries where mifepristone is illegal or unavailable.
Lawyers for the FDA have pointed out that serious side effects with mifepristone are rare and the agency has repeatedly affirmed the drug's safety by reviewing subsequent studies and data. Pulling the drug more than 20 years after approval would be “extraordinary and unprecedented,” the government stated in its legal response.
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