Thanks to you at home for joining me this hour.

In 1993, Time magazine called it

the pill that changes everything.

The new abortion pill called RU 46

was part of a two drug protocol for medication abortion and it really changed the American

health care landscape and the landscape across the globe.

Pregnant people in China, the United Kingdom, Sweden and France, where the drug had already been

improved, had the ability to end pregnancies without undergoing surgery and

even in some cases from inside the four walls of their own homes.

According to time,

RU486 made abortion a truly personal

and private choice.

But it also opened up a whole new frontier of anti-abortion backlash.

As soon as the drug was first developed and approved in France in the 1980s, it sparked

protests.

Facing intense pressure from the Catholic Church, the company behind the

pill decided to temporarily just pull it from the market. In the U.S. the pill was considered

a banned substance. Federal research was forbidden during the Reagan and

Bush years. Finally in September of 2000, after four years and three rounds of

FDA reviews during the Clinton administration,

RU486 was approved in the US.

But the war had just begun.

...