The U.S. Supreme Court decided Friday that mifepristone, an abortion pill, will be broadly accessible amid an ongoing legal battle over its regulatory approval.
Mifepristone, approved in 2000 by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is part of a chemical abortion process, and is generally taken with another drug called misoprostol, to kill an unborn child in pregnancies up to 10 weeks. It is also sometimes used for women who have miscarriages.
Chemical abortion, also referred to as medication abortion, comprises more than half of total U.S. abortions.
In a brief order, the majority of the Supreme Court judges on Friday granted emergency requests by the Biden administration’s Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, a manufacturer of the drug. The decision puts on hold a preliminary injunction issued on April 7 by a Trump-appointed Texas federal judge, Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, which had frozen the drug’s FDA approval….