What is Mifepristone, the abortion pill suspended by Texas judge in US
3 min read . Updated: 08 Apr 2023, 11:26 AM IST
Premium- President Joe Biden has said that his administration will fight against the federal judge order and called the ruling next step towards ban on abortion.
A federal judge in Texas on Friday ordered a hold on the US approval of the abortion medication mifepristone, throwing into question access to the nation's most common method of abortion in a ruling that waved aside decades of scientific approval.
US District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, a Trump administration appointee in Amarillo, Texas, suspended the approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which will essentially make sales of the pill illegal in the US, while a legal challenge proceeds. The immediate impact of the ruling was not clear, including how quickly access to the abortion pill might be curtailed.
The legal battle over medication abortion is only beginning and could wend its way through multiple levels of appeals courts over a period of months or years before it is resolved. Kacsmaryk signed an injunction directing the FDA to stay mifepristone's approval while a lawsuit challenging the safety and approval of the drug continues. His 67-page order gave the government seven days to appeal.
President Joe Biden has said that his administration will fight against the federal judge order and called the ruling next step toward an abortion ban. In a tweet, he wrote, “The medication in question is used for medication abortion. It doesn't just affect women in Texas. If it stands, it'd prevent women across the country from accessing the medication. It's the next step toward an abortion ban that Republican elected officials vowed to make law."
Here's all you need to know about abortion pill mifepristone:
Medication abortion is a two-drug regimen consisting of mifepristone followed by misoprostol used to terminate a pregnancy within the first 10 weeks.
It works by blocking progesterone, a hormone that’s necessary for a pregnancy to continue.
Doctors generally prescribe it with misoprostol, a drug used to treat stomach ulcers, that can also induce contractions. When taken together, the two pills have an over 95 percent efficacy rate in safely ending pregnancies with no further intervention
Mifepristone has been used by millions of women over the past 23 years.
Medical groups recently noted that the complications from mifepristone occur at a lower rate than that seen with wisdom teeth removal, colonoscopies and other routine medical procedures.
Mifepristone is considered the “standard of care" for medication abortion and miscarriage treatment, according to Hayley McMahon, a public health researcher and doctoral student at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University.
France was the first country to approve mifepristone to terminate pregnancies in 1988. Since then more than 70 countries have followed.
The lawsuit in the Texas case was filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom, which was also involved in the Mississippi case that led to Roe v. Wade being overturned. At the core of the lawsuit is the allegation that the FDA's initial approval of mifepristone was flawed because it did not adequately review its safety risks.
Anti-abortion groups, which are newly encouraged about their ability to further restrict abortion and prevail in court since last's year's reversal of Roe v. Wade, embraced the Texas ruling.
Legal experts warned that the ruling could upend decades of precedent, setting the stage for political groups to overturn other FDA approvals of controversial drugs and vaccines. “This has never happened before in history — it's a huge deal," said Greer Donley, a professor specializing in reproductive health care at the University of Pittsburgh Law School. “You have a federal judge who has zero scientific background second guessing every scientific decision that the FDA made."
Clinics and doctors that prescribe the two-drug combination have said that if mifepristone were pulled from the market, they would switch to using only the second drug, misoprostol. That single-drug approach has a slightly lower rate of effectiveness in ending pregnancies, but it is widely used in countries where mifepristone is illegal or unavailable.
(With inputs from agencies)