For a medication abortion in the U.S., patients are given two pills: mifepristone (“mife”) followed by misoprostol (“miso”).
The legal cases have focused solely on the first medication: mife. This is because mife was specifically approved by the FDA in 2000 for abortions, to be used followed by miso.
Miso, on the other hand, was approved in 1988 for the treatment of . . . stomach ulcers. It was given a warning label that if taken while pregnant, it would induce a miscarriage.
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Clinical consensus has held that the combined regimen (mife+miso) is more effective at ending a pregnancy than miso only. This is primarily based on pooled data across a wide range of studies that included a wide range of ways people can use the medication: i.e., different dosages, different routes of administration, and different intervals between doses.
But if we look at the studies that report on a specific regimen (3+ doses of 800ug miso taken every three hours), miso only may be more effective than commonly thought. Across eight study groups that looked at 3+ doses of miso only, upwards of 90% had a complete abortion (compared to ~95% expected for the combined mife+miso regiment.)
From the article:
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