Women will be able to take the so-called abortion pill later in a pregnancy and with fewer doctor visits under a new federal label for the drug that undermines several state laws aimed at restricting medical abortions.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) notified the manufacturer of the drug Mifeprex in a letter on Tuesday that the drug is safe and effective for terminating a pregnancy in accordance with the new label. Also known as mifepristone or the abortion pill, the drug manufactured by Danco Laboratories is used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, to end a pregnancyy79-
The change brings the directions for taking the drug, mifepristone, in line with what has become standard medical practice in most states: reducing the dosage to 200 milligrams from 600 milligrams, decreasing the number of visits a woman must make to a doctor to two from three, and extending the period when she can take the pill to 10 weeks of pregnancy from seven weeks.
“This is a major shift both in closing the gap between science and legal regulation and in enabling women to exercise their constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy,” said Suzanne B. Goldberg, a law professor at Columbia University who specializes in sexuality and gender law.
