As a ban on one abortion pill looms, providers look to the other as a fallback. But that isn’t ideal

In stories about medication abortions, we often give mifepristone a starring role. We call the dashing biochemist who developed it “the father of the abortion pill,” noting his youth spent in the French Resistance and his glamorous, Vanity-Fair-worthy flings. We see it in the headlines pretty frequently, dragging its trusty sidekick misoprostol in tow. Later this month, a Trump-appointed judge in Texas may well ban it from the sanctioned market by ordering the Food and Drug Administration to overturn its approval.

So it might seem surprising that American abortion providers are responding to that threatened prohibition by preparing to forego mifepristone and use misoprostol alone. How could that be? Wasn’t mifepristone the abortion pill, the critical tool for ending a pregnancy in the first trimester? If you can get the job done with one drug, why have we been using a combination of two?