Why this company has spent nine years trying to sell birth control pills without a prescription

Frédérique Welgryn, Perrigo’s global vice president of women’s health poses for a portrait. (Credit: Courtesy of HRA Pharma)

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Business interest groups mobilize against the FTC's Lina Khan, McDonald's franchise owners refuse to promote Cardi B's meal, and Fortune's Maria Aspan explains why one company has spent nine years trying to sell birth control pills—without a prescription. Have a restful weekend.

- Decade-long effort. Long before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, executives at HRA Pharma saw a business opportunity in women’s reproductive health care.

They’re some of the only ones. U.S. pharmaceutical companies have largely walked away from investing in women’s health, as our ongoing Fortune series is exploring. And the business of reproductive health has been particularly fraught—even before the abortion bans, lawsuits, and other threats to both abortion and contraception that keep on mounting. (For example, a federal judge in Texas is likely to rule soon in a case that could block distribution of mifepristone, a drug used in more than half of all U.S. abortions.)