The coalition led by New York argued that overturning the FDA approval would make the pill largely unavailable, forcing women to either undergo a more invasive surgical procedure or forgo abortion altogether.
"This would have devastating consequences," the attorneys general told Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who is presiding over the case in the U.S. District Court in Northern Texas. "For two decades, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acted to establish a nationwide regime of on-demand abortion by licensing sweeping access to chemical abortion drugs—in defiance of federal and state laws protecting life, health, and safety," the Republican attorneys general argued.
The FDA approved mifepristone as a safe and effective method to terminate an early pregnancy based on extensive scientific evidence, the agency's lawyers wrote. Decades of experience among thousands of women have confirmed that the drug regimen is safer than surgical abortion or childbirth, the lawyers argued.. He ordered one of the abortion pill makers, Danco Laboratories, to lay out its opposition to the lawsuit. The anti-abortion physicians who brought the case then have until Feb.