‘A slippery slope’: A looming nationwide abortion pill ban could undermine the entire drug approval system

His concern was about more than abortion pills themselves. After his stint in Congress, Jim Greenwood had spent 15 years as the president and CEO of one of the biopharma industry’s main lobbying groups. He figured that the 20-year-old approval of mifepristone might be in jeopardy. If an attempted ban prevailed in court, he knew, it could undermine the country’s infrastructure for evaluating all drugs. “Could states ban vaccines of one kind or another? It’s a slippery slope,” he said, adding, “There are lots of anti-vaxxers in lots of state legislatures.”