Carter Sherman

The first is called mifepristone.

And you take one dose of it.

24 hours later, you take doses of a second drug called misoprostol.

The mifepristone stops the pregnancy from growing.

The misoprostol contracts the uterus so that it expels the pregnancy.

And it is after that taking of the second drug, misoprostol, that people tend to have the side effects that you associate with an abortion.

Got it.

So bleeding, cramping, nausea, diarrhea, etc.

OK, so that is mifepristone.

Mifepristone is the drug that is at stake right now.

Last year, Louisiana sued the FDA over the fact that it allows abortion providers to mail mifepristone.

And on May 1st, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to pause mail order access to Mifepristone while litigation in Louisiana's case plays out.

Absolutely.

So what that means is that under the Fifth Circuit's ruling, no one can get access to mail order Mifepristone, including people who live in states that don't ban abortion, people who live in blue states who might think that their abortion rights are protected.

That argument has entered the chat, shall we say, but it's not really a good faith argument.

Mifepristone and misoprostol are incredibly well-researched.

More than 100 studies conducted across more than a dozen countries have found that when you use these two drugs to end a pregnancy, it is a safe and effective abortion method in the first trimester of pregnancy.

Now, the thing to understand here is that it is possible to have a misoprostol-only abortion and just use that second drug in the regimen.

But it tends to be less safe and less effective.

But abortion providers have said that if they're not allowed to mail mifepristone anymore, they'll send people misoprostol-only.