The Supreme Court sided with the FDA and unanimously ruled to uphold access to abortion pill mifepristone. The decision quells worries about what it might look like if the Supreme Court sided with the physician group — many healthcare leaders feared that if the top court could overturn mifepristone’s FDA approval, the same could happen to other drugs.
Mifepristone and misoprostol, two pills that are taken together to terminate a pregnancy, have been approved by the FDA since 2000. But access to these drugs have been in serious jeopardy this year, and a federal judge in Texas recently ruled to suspend the FDA's decadeslong approval of mifepristone. The final outcome for abortion pill access in the U.S. is still unclear among confliction federal rulings — the issue will likely end up in the Supreme Court.
At the Payer Insights sessions on Day 1 of ViVE 2024, a panel on prior authorization offered compelling insights from speakers who shared the positive developments in this area after years of mounting frustration. Speakers also shared challenges as they work with providers to figure out how policy developments and technology will work in practice.
The current legal landscape makes access to medication abortion crucial in protecting as much access to reproductive healthcare as possible and in protecting healthcare providers’ abilities to do their jobs without fear of prosecution.
The group complains that the FDA never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use.