The FDA's power to approve drugs faces sweeping challenge in lawsuit seeking to pull abortion pill from U.S. market

Key Points

• Anti-abortion physicians are suing to overturn the FDA's approval of mifepristone, which dates back more than two decades.
• Mifepristone used in combination with misoprostol is the most common way to terminate a pregnancy in the U.S.
• If the lawsuit prevails, mifepristone would no longer be available in the U.S. market and the FDA's drug approval powers would be weakened.

Mifepristone (Mifeprex) and Misoprostol, the two drugs used in a medication abortion, are seen at the Women's Reproductive Clinic, which provides legal medication abortion services, in Santa Teresa, New Mexico, on June 17, 2022.

Robyn Beck | AFP | Getty Images

The Food and Drug Administration is squaring off with anti-abortion physicians in an unprecedented legal challenge to its more than two-decade-old approval of a pill used to terminate early pregnancies.

The Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine asked a federal district court in Dallas late last year to declare the FDA approval unlawful and completely remove the abortion pill from the U.S. market.