(Reuters) -A divided federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld West Virginia’s near-total ban on abortion, including limits it imposed on access to the medication abortion drug mifepristone.
The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, said the federal Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone did not preempt the West Virginia law as it applied to medication abortions.
GenBioPro, which sells a generic version of the pill, claimed that FDA approval overrode West Virginia’s 2022 abortion law, which banned most abortions in the state.
Mifepristone is the first pill, followed by the drug misoprostol, for medication abortion in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, and won FDA approval in 2000.
Medication abortions account for more than half of U.S. abortions, though 28 states restrict access, according to the nonprofit Guttmacher Institute, which focuses on reproductive health.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Porter)
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