To protect abortion access, the FDA should decline to enforce a mifepristone ban | David S Cohen, Greer Donley and Rachel Rebouché

Try as it might, the Food and Drug Administration cannot escape the abortion debate. The agency must be bolder

On Friday, the nation was treated to dueling decisions from federal judges regarding the first drug in a medication abortion: mifepristone. A judge in Texas ruled that the Food and drug Administration (FDA) likely improperly approved the drug, staying its approval while the case plays out. Minutes later, a judge in Washington state ruled that the FDA could not change the status quo regarding mifepristone's availability.

In response to these two cases and two other less-publicized cases involving the FDA and medication abortion, the agency needs to chart a course consistent with its mission to protect patient health and to follow the evidence. As the Biden administration has stated, protecting medication abortion is a public health imperative now that states can ban all abortion outright. If the agency does not respond to these conflicting rulings in a manner tailored to provide the greatest access possible to medication abortion, it will be telling of Biden's commitment to reproductive justice.

David S Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University, is a co-author of Obstacle Course: The Everyday Struggle to Get an Abortion in America, a board member of the Abortion Care Network and a consulting attorney with the Women's Law Project

Greer Donley is a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a board member of the Women's Law Project

Rachel Rebouche is the dean of the Temple University Beasley School of Law and a faculty fellow at the Center for Public Health Law Research