RFK Jr orders mifepristone review as anti-abortion groups push for ban

Health secretary cites ‘new data’ that emerged from flawed study conservatives are using to pressure US government

Susan Rinkunas
Wed 14 May 2025

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, said on Wednesday that he had directed the FDA to review the regulations around the abortion pill mifepristone.

The review, he said, was necessary due to “new data” – data that emerged from a flawed analysis that top US anti-abortion groups are now using to pressure the Trump administration to reimpose restrictions on the abortion pill, if not pull it from the market entirely.

“It’s alarming,” Kennedy told the Missouri senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, during a congressional hearing. “Clearly, it indicates that, at very least, the label should be changed.”

Continued: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/14/rfk-jr-fda-abortion-pill-mifepristone

USA – A ‘dangerous precedent’: Doctors and patient advocates fear restricted access to abortion pill

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments Tuesday in a case that could limit access to mifepristone.

March 25, 2024
By Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

About two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the court on Tuesday will revisit the issue of reproductive rights, this time contemplating whether to limit access to mifepristone, the first of two pills used in medication abortion.

Ahead of oral arguments and eventual ruling, doctors and patient advocates are expressing alarm about what might happen if the high court decides to tighten access to the drug.

Continued: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/doctors-fear-restricted-access-abortion-pill-mifepristone-rcna144955

USA – Pharmacies begin dispensing abortion pills

A handful of pharmacies are offering the pills 10 months after the Biden administration allowed them to do so.

By ALICE MIRANDA OLLSTEIN and LAUREN GARDNER
Oct 6, 2023

A handful of independent pharmacies across the country have quietly begun dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone under new rules created by the Biden administration earlier this year, even as a looming Supreme Court case could reimpose restrictions or ban the drugs entirely.

Thousands of branches of major pharmacy chains are poised to join them — making the drugs more accessible to millions of people nationwide and kicking off a new phase of the legal and political battle over the most popular method of ending a pregnancy.

Continued: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/10/06/pharmacies-begin-dispensing-abortion-pills-00120397

Abortion rights advocates say consequences dire if U.S. Supreme Court declines to hear pill case

BY: SOFIA RESNICK
OCTOBER 6, 2023

More than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court decided states could set their own abortion laws, including bans, the nation’s highest court now could cut off abortion access in states where abortion is still legal.

The Supreme Court began its new term this week and has yet to announce whether it will hear Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, before the term ends in June 2024. This case was designed by the religious right to overturn the approval of the commonly used abortion drug mifepristone. But whatever the court does — even if it declines to hear the case — will further alter healthcare access in the U.S., reproductive health advocates said on a call to reporters Thursday.

Continued: https://ncnewsline.com/2023/10/06/abortion-rights-advocates-say-consequences-dire-if-u-s-supreme-court-declines-to-hear-pill-case/

A Trump-Stacked Court Hopes to Limit Access to the Abortion Pill. The Final Decision Now Lies With SCOTUS.

8/17/2023
by CARRIE N. BAKER, Ms. Magazine

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals released a decision on Wednesday, Aug. 16, that dismissed a challenge to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s 2000 approval of mifepristone, but would sharply restrict access to medication abortion nationwide and eliminate telemedicine abortion. The decision in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA remains on hold until final review by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“While the court has acknowledged that mifepristone—both brand and generic versions—can stay on the market, they are insisting we should roll back the clock to 2000 and put the medication under lock and key,” said Kirsten Moore, director of Expanding Medication Abortion Access Project (EMAA Project). “The extremist judges ignored the FDA, our basic rights, and more than 20 years of scientific evidence showing mifepristone is safe and effective, rolling back decades of advancement in the standard of care. This is a dangerous precedent for FDA’s scientific review authority.”

Continued: https://msmagazine.com/2023/08/17/abortion-pills-fifth-circuit-mifepristone/

USA – New lawsuits target state restrictions on abortion pills

Wed, January 25, 2023

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supporters of abortion rights filed separate lawsuits Wednesday challenging two states' abortion pill restrictions, the opening salvo in what’s expected to a be a protracted legal battle over access to the medications.

The lawsuits argue that limits on the drugs in North Carolina and West Virginia run afoul of the federal authority of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which has approved the abortion pill as a safe and effective method for ending pregnancy.

Continued: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/lawsuits-target-state-restrictions-abortion-171454321.html

USA – The new front in the right’s war on abortion

Abortion pills are at the heart of the fight over abortion access in a post-Roe world.

By Rachel M. Cohen
Jan 9, 2023

The Biden administration helped expand access to medication abortion last week, with the US Food and Drug Administration finalizing a rule to make the pills more readily available in pharmacies. But this effort to help patients get pills to end a pregnancy could be dwarfed by a major push to restrict access to the medication from anti-abortion leaders and their Republican allies.

As lawmakers head back to state legislatures this month, many for the first time since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, Republicans face new pressure to restrict access to the combination of abortion-inducing drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, used typically within the first 10 to 12 weeks of a pregnancy. Medication abortion has become the most common method for ending pregnancies in the United States, partly due to its safety record, its lower cost, diminished access to in-person care, and greater opportunities for privacy.

Continued: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2023/1/9/23540562/abortion-pills-medication-dobbs-roe-mifepristone

USA – FDA says it will greenlight pharmacies to fill prescriptions for abortion pill

Pharmacies would have to become certified and a prescription is still needed.

By Anne Flaherty
January 3, 2023

The abortion pill mifepristone is safe enough that retail pharmacies can begin dispensing it so long as a certified health care provider prescribes the drug and if that pharmacy meets certain requirements, according to new rules published Tuesday by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

If pharmacies jump on board, the FDA action could dramatically expand access to the drug in states where it's already legal. Doctors, for example, might be more willing to get certified to prescribe the drug because they would no longer have to stock it themselves and could write a prescription much as they would any other medication.

Continued: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fda-greenlight-pharmacies-fill-prescriptions-abortion-pill-agency/story?id=96115469

USA – Label change for mifepristone could reduce barriers to care for miscarriages, advocates say in petition to FDA

Regulations around mifepristone, a common drug used for medication abortion, make it difficult for miscarrying patients to access it. A new petition to the FDA asks for a label change to make it easier to obtain.

Jennifer Gerson
October 4, 2022

Over 40 medical and advocacy groups submitted a petition to the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) asking for miscarriage management to be added as a use
case for mifepristone, a drug commonly used in medical abortions, and ease the
restrictions around who can prescribe it.

Groups including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
(ACOG), SisterReach, Physicians for Reproductive Health and the Expanding
Medication Abortion Access (EMAA) Project were behind the petition. The changes
they asked for Tuesday would make the drug easier to access for people
experiencing miscarriages as some doctors and pharmacies have become more
reluctant to distribute it after the end of Roe v. Wade.

Continued: https://19thnews.org/2022/10/mifepristone-miscarriage-label-change-fda-petition/

USA – Abortion pills are becoming more commonly used but won’t be a post-Roe ‘panacea’

By Deidre McPhillips, CNN
Tue July 19, 2022

In light of last month's Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and revoked the constitutional right to abortion, much of the Biden administration's response has been focused on protecting access to medication abortion.

Mifepristone -- a pill used to medically induce abortion in combination with another drug, misoprostol -- is approved for use by the US Food and Drug Administration, and some have argued that its federal approval could take precedence over state laws attempting to ban it.

Continued: https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/health/medication-abortion-not-for-everyone/index.html