embryo through the vagina. Prevalence A Guttmacher Institute survey of all known abortion providers in the U.S. found that medical abortions accounted for 54% of all abortions in 2020. This count did not include self-induced abortions. At Planned Parenthood clinics in the U.S., medical abortions accounted for 32% of first trimester abortions in 2008, 35% of all abortions in 2010 and 43% of all abortions in 2014. In 2009, medical abortion regimens using mifepristone in combination with a prostaglandin analog were the most common methods used to induce second-trimester abortions in Canada, most of Europe, China and India; in contrast to the U.S., where 96% of second-trimester abortions were performed surgically by dilation and evacuation. History Swedish researchers began testing potential abortifacients in 1965. In 1968, the Swedish physician Lars Engström published a paper on a clinical trial, conducted at the women's clinic of Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm, of the compound F6103 on pregnant Swedish women with the aim of inducing abortion. It was the first clinical trial of an abortion pill to be conducted in Sweden. The paper, originally titled The Swedish Abortion Pill, was renamed to The Swedish Postconception Pill, due to the small number of induced abortions that occurred in the trial population. After these efforts were largely unsuccessful with F6103, the same researchers attempted to find an abortion pill with prostaglandins, capitalizing on the number of well-established prostaglandin scientists working in Sweden at the time; they were eventually awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physiology for their work. Medical abortion became a successful alternative method of abortion with the availability of prostaglandin analogs in the 1970s and the antiprogestogen mifepristone (also known as RU-486) in the 1980s. Mifepristone was first approved for use in 1998 in China and France. The drugs were approved for abortions in 2000 in U.S., but only through 49 days gestation. In 2016, the U.S. FDA updated mifepristone's label to support usage through 70 days gestation. Society and culture The WHO affirms that laws and policies should support people's access to evidence-based medically approved care, including medical abortion. "Reversal" controversy Some anti-abortion groups claim that patients who change their mind about the abortion after taking mifepristone can "reverse" the abortion by administering progesterone (and not administering misoprostol). As of 2022, there is no scientifically rigorous evidence that the effects of mifepristone can be reversed this way. Even so, several states in the