Opinion: Celebrating mifepristone, a hero in modern abortion access, on its 25th anniversary in the U.S.

When the Food and Drug Administration approved mifepristone, the abortion pill, on Sept. 28, 2000, none of us working on expanding access to reproductive health care could have imagined the future we find ourselves in 25 years later. From the fall of Roe in 2022 and the subsequent banning or restriction of abortion in 19 states, to South Carolina’s recent efforts to include some forms of birth control in its total abortion ban, access to the basic medical care and medications that allow us to control our reproductive destinies is hanging by a thread. In the midst of this reproductive health care apocalypse, mifepristone is proving itself to be a hero in the fight for abortion access.

Mifepristone was first approved in 1988 in France, where it was developed by Roussel-Uclaf and known as RU-486. I was a graduate student studying public health at that time and remember the thrill of possibility I felt upon hearing the news. I resonated with the French minister of health’s declaration that mifepristone was “the moral property of women.” I even used the news of its first approval as the basis for an assignment in which we were supposed to advocate for a public health intervention. I remember how easy it was to advocate for the many benefits mifepristone could bring to women’s health. 

Read the rest…