A federal judge on Sunday agreed to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s request to pause a lawsuit over the safety of the mifepristone pill and the drug’s mail-order distribution.
Judge Reed O’Connor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ordered that the lawsuit would be delayed until either Dec. 1 or the completion of the FDA’s safety review of mifepristone, whichever comes first.
In the lawsuit, Texas and Florida asked the court to revoke the FDA’s approval of the abortion-inducing pill, saying the agency didn’t adequately evaluate its safety when it approved the drug in 2000. The lawsuit also challenged mail-order distribution of the pill.
The FDA first announced it would review mifepristone in September 2025.
Pro-life group Live Action called on the FDA to protect women and unborn children from the abortion pill, citing studies that show dangerous side effects of the drug.
“The Food and Drug Administration and Health and Human Services officials must do their job to protect women and children from the dangerous abortion pill, which now accounts for 65% of all abortions in the United States and has led to the deaths of 7.5 million preborn children since its release,” Noah Brandt, spokesman for Live Action, told EWTN News.
“Both agencies have seen real-world data that show the harmful effects of the abortion pill,” Brandt said. “Within 45 days of a chemical abortion, 1 in 10 women experience serious adverse events from mifepristone, the first drug in the abortion pill regimen, such as sepsis, infection, or hemorrhaging.”
“This shift in timing for the lawsuit and their ‘promised’ review indicates that they are prioritizing politics over the safety of American women and children,” Brandt said.
“While they continue to brush off these critical issues, the abortion pill is recklessly being mailed across state lines via telehealth distribution, enabling coercion and abuse,” Brandt said. “It’s time deadly mail-order abortion ended once and for all and this lethal pill be removed from the market completely.”