The U.S. Department of Justice this week filed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn a lower court decision that would limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone. The brief argued that the ruling would disrupt the authority of the Food and Drug Administration and harm the U.S. health-care system.

"The loss of access to mifepristone would be damaging for women and health-care providers around the nation," Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in the brief. "For many patients, mifepristone is the best method to lawfully terminate their early pregnancies. They may choose mifepristone over surgical abortion because of medical necessity, a desire for privacy or past trauma."

In a separate brief, lawyers for the drugmaker, Danco, said the questions raised in the case "are not hard under existing precedent" and "do not ask the court to wade into a politically charged debate around abortion." The appeals court ruling under review "threatens to destabilize the pharmaceutical industry, which relies both on FDA's ability to make predictive judgments and on courts not second-guessing those scientific judgments," the lawyers wrote.