The Supreme Court of the United States blocked rulings from lower courts that would have been imposed mifepristone restrictionsone of the pills used in half of all abortions in the country, as lawsuits continue.

Mifepristone is part of a two-drug procedure that can be used during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy. It has a history of being safe, and the FDA estimates that since its approval in 2000, 5.6 million Americans have used it to terminate pregnancies.

The short, paragraph-long order dispenses with all restrictions and hands a victory to the administration of President Joe Biden and the maker of mifepristone, Danco Laboratorieswho had appealed against the decisions of the lower courts.

In response to Friday’s decision, Biden issued a statement calling on voters to take the issue of access to abortion to the polls. “The stakes couldn’t be higher for women across America.she wrote, vowing to fight “politically driven attacks on women’s health”.

“But let’s be clear: The American people must continue to use their voice as a voice and elect a Congress that will pass legislation restoring Roe’s protections against Wade,” Biden added, citing a landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that protected the constitutional right to abortion for nearly half a century.

That precedent was struck down in June 2022 under the court’s current six-to-three Conservative majority, sparking legal challenges in the United States to restrict access to abortion.

Planned Parenthood, an abortion lawyer in the US, praised the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday. “This is good news, but the facts remain the same: access to mifepristone should never have been compromised in the first place,” said the organization, a leading provider of voluntary termination of pregnancy.