Fed­er­al ap­peals court re­stricts ac­cess to abor­tion pill, at­tempt­ing to re­vert back to FDA's 2016 re­stric­tions on the drug

The abor­tion drug mifepri­s­tone is once again fac­ing court-im­posed re­stric­tions as a fed­er­al Fifth Cir­cuit Court of Ap­peals ruled Wednes­day that un­til fi­nal judg­ment, the com­mon­ly used drug and its gener­ic ver­sions will on­ly re­main avail­able to the pub­lic un­der the con­di­tions for use that ex­ist­ed in 2016, be­fore the FDA loos­ened some of the reg­u­la­tions.

The ap­peals court, which al­so said that any court chal­lenge over the ap­proval de­ci­sion of mifepris­ton will like­ly fail, al­so said that changes the FDA made in 2016 around the mifepri­s­tone REMS pro­gram “gen­er­al­ly loosen the pro­tec­tions and reg­u­la­tions re­lat­ing to the use of mifepri­s­tone” and “will be stayed dur­ing the pen­den­cy of this lit­i­ga­tion.”

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