WASHINGTON (AP) — on Thursday unanimously preserved access to a medication that was used in in the U.S. last year, in the court’s first abortion decision since conservative justices two years ago.
that opponents lacked the legal right to sue over the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the medication, , and the FDA's subsequent actions to ease access to it. The case had threatened to restrict access to mifepristone across the country, including in states where abortion remains legal. Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote for the court that “federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions.
" Kavanaugh was part of the majority to overturn Roe. The high court is separately considering another abortion case, about whether at hospitals overrides state abortion bans in rare emergency cases in which a pregnant patient’s health is at serious risk. More than 6 million people have used mifepristone since 2000.
Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and primes the uterus to respond to the contraction-causing effect of a second drug, misoprostol. has been used to end a pregnancy through 10 weeks gestation. Health care providers have said that if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain, they would switch to using only misoprostol, which is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.
President Joe Biden’s administration and drug manufacturers had warned that siding with abortion opponents in .