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Jamie Rowen, Associate Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, UMass Amherst

Anti-mifepristone court decisions rely on medical misinformation about abortion and questionable legal reasoning

A goal of the Texas plaintiffs was to stop the practice of sending abortion medication by mail. Andrii Zorii/iStock via Getty Images Plus

An early April 2023 decision by a U.S. district judge in Texas to reverse 23 years of approval of the abortion pill mifepristone has sparked explosive debate.

Mifepristone is a medicine that blocks the receptors for the hormone progesterone, which is needed for fetal development. It is part of a two-step medication abortion regimen along with misoprostol, a drug used to prevent stomach ulcers that also causes uterine contractions. Medication abortion with this two-step approach or a slightly less effective misoprostol-only regimen is now used in more than half of all abortions in the U.S.

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