Conservative judges hear challenge to abortion pill access in controversial lawsuit

Appeals court hears case brought by anti-abortion groups calling on the FDA to suspend decades-old approval of mifepristone

Three US appeals court judges who have previously favored abortion restrictions prepared to hear oral arguments on Wednesday on the future of the major abortion drug mifepristone.

The case - which has landed before judges Jennifer Walker Elrod, James Ho and Cory Wilson - essentially calls on them to rule on whether the federal government should suspend or scale back the federal Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of mifepristone in 2000, along with later actions that made the pill more widely accessible.