The Supreme Court said Monday it will hear oral arguments in March in a high-profile case on the Food and Drug Administration‘s approval of a common abortion pill after a lower court put in place restrictions on how the drug can be used and distributed.
The case involves mifepristone maker Danco Laboratories and follows months of litigation after a federal district judge’s decision in Texas last April to suspend the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug.
The high court agreed in December to hear oral arguments for the case. On Monday, the court announced that oral arguments will take place on March 26.
Mifepristone is the first of a two-pill chemical abortion process, which works by blocking a woman’s progesterone receptors to stop fetal growth. The second pill, misoprostol, induces contractions to expel the fetus.
Although mifepristone was originally approved by the FDA in 2000, the agency loosened restrictions on the drug in 2016 to allow for the abortion agent to be used up to 10-weeks gestation instead of the initial eight weeks.
Restrictions on the drug were further relaxed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic to allow for patients to receive the medication without being physically examined by a healthcare provider, allowing by-mail access.
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The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in August upheld the conditions of the 2000 approval for the medication, but rejected all changes that the FDA made in 2016 and after.
According to the abortion-rights think tank the Guttmacher Institute, approximately 54% of abortions in the United States in 2022 were medication abortions.
