A majority of the Supreme Court's justices, both conservative and liberal, did not seem inclined to block the FDA's existing rules for prescribing and dispensing the abortion pill mifepristone.
The case is widely seen as a threat not just to the increased accessibility of abortion pills, but to the FDA's entire structure of regulating pharmaceuticals.
More than half the women in this country who choose to terminate a pregnancy use a combination of pills approved by the FDA, one of which is mifepristone, marketed by Danco Laboratories as Mifeprex.
The FDA first approved the pill regimen 24 years ago, and over the last eight years, the agency has eliminated some restrictions that it found to be unnecessary. For instance, the pills can now be prescribed during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, instead of the original seven weeks, and prescriptions can be filled by mail or at pharmacies, instead of, as before, only at a doctor's office.