The Food and Drug Administration last week approved a generic of mifepristone, the first pill in the two-step abortion drug regimen, sparking outrage from pro-lifers.

“The Trump Administration’s approval of a generic chemical abortion drug is a complete betrayal of the pro-life movement that elected President Trump,” former Vice President Mike Pence said.

“The FDA has approved a new abortion drug, which may render its promised ‘safety study’ of chemical abortions irrelevant,” said  Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, who wrote a letter about the decision to FDA commissioner Marty Makary. “I want to know how this happened.”

The FDA is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services, run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who identified as “pro-choice” until joining the Trump administration. Kennedy, however, has promised to “implement” the president’s policies and also to “understand the safety of every drug – mifepristone and every other drug.”

The FDA’s approval “makes the drug, from the company Evita Solutions, the second generic version to hit the market,” reports NBC. “The first, from pharmaceutical company GenBioPro, was approved in 2019.”

But the generic drug approval does not signify support for abortion from the administration, the White House says. “HHS’s decision, it’s not an endorsement of this drug by any means. They’re simply following the law,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt during a briefing. According to an HHS statement, she said, “By law, the secretary of Health and Human Services must approve a generic drug application if the application demonstrates the generic drug is the quote, ‘same,’ as the brand-name drug.”

If the administration has no choice but to approve generic versions of the abortion pill, it had better focus its energy on limiting the drug’s availability. Right now, it’s easy to get abortion pills online, whether directly through telemedicine appointments or on a “late period pill” website. Some states are even stockpiling them. Washington can make getting abortion pills more difficult by reviewing their safety — an independent study recently found them to be much more dangerous than previously thought — and making them more difficult to obtain, starting with requiring an in-person visit for a prescription.

This would hardly be unprecedented. The in-person requirement for abortion pills was temporarily waived during the COVID-19 pandemic and then scrapped entirely in 2023. Different states have their own requirements regarding abortion pills (some make them easily obtainable; some make them illegal), but the pills still account for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the U.S.

Part of the FDA’s mission is “protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human … drugs.” Let’s hope it makes this life-or-death issue a top priority.