The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit has issued a much-anticipated ruling in a case concerning the legal status of the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone. The decision includes good and bad news for supporters of status-quo access to the abortion pill.
In a 2–1 decision released Wednesday, a three-judge panel of the appeals court rejected the parts of a lower court's ruling saying that the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine—the group challenging the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) initial approval of mifepristone back in 2000 and its generic approval in 2019—had standing to bring these challenges and had done so in a timely manner. "We vacate the component of the order that stayed the effective date of the 2000 Approval and the 2019 Generic Approval," wrote 5th Circuit Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod for the majority.
