The ongoing battle over mifepristone: implications and impact.

Leona Benten, a social worker and activist, became the test case in the legal fight challenging the FDA’s ban on importing RU-486, the French-made abortion pill that later became known as mifepristone. Although Benten lost her Supreme Court case to regain her pills in a 7-2 decision and chose to get a surgical abortion, she had pushed mifepristone into the national spotlight and helped galvanize a movement to overturn the American ban on the drug. The FDA approved mifepristone in 2000 in what the president of Planned Parenthood said was “the most significant technological advance in women’s reproductive health care since the birth control pill.”