Editor’s note: Roxanne Jones, founding editor of ESPN The Magazine and former vice president of ESPN, has been a producer, reporter and editor for the New York Daily News and The Philadelphia Inquirer. Jones is co-author of “Say It Out Loud: An Illustrated History of the Black Athlete.” He speaks weekly about politics, sports and culture on Philadelphia’s 900AM WURD. The opinions expressed here are solely his own. read more opinion on CNN.

The ruling earlier this month by a federal judge in Texas to suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a drug frequently used for medical abortions is very personal to me.

That’s because I took mifepristone years ago during a miscarriage and it saved my life.

When I was prescribed mifepristone, it had not yet taken center stage in America’s abortion wars. I did not have to make a rushed trip across state lines to get my medication, unlike many women who need the medication but live in one of the many states that have restricted access to medication abortion or passed near-total bans on abortion.

They did not force me to arrange a secret meeting with a stranger to buy my medications on the black market, as several women I spoke to recently said they planned to do. I also haven’t had to order mifepristone online and find myself dealing with many scammers who take advantage of the current patchwork of state abortion laws in the US.

Mifepristone is one of two drugs used in a medication abortion and the other, misoprostol, was not subject to the Texas judge’s ruling. Both drugs can be given to someone experiencing a miscarriage, allowing them to terminate the pregnancy when the fetus is not viable.

It happened a few years ago: after experiencing more than a day of bleeding during the first trimester of my pregnancy, I visited my gynecologist, who after examining me explained that my blood pressure was dropping rapidly and that the heavy bleeding I was experiencing was a sure sign of a miscarriage.

For many women, being prescribed mifepristone is part of their routine medical care. In my case it was not like that: as my doctor explained to me, I was facing a serious medical emergency. I was grateful for the medicine that saved my life.

My miscarriage took me by surprise. I loved being pregnant the first time, about a decade earlier. And as a healthy woman, I had no reason to fear when I became pregnant again. When I was given mifepristone, I was losing a life I had already begun to love. And like many other women, despite my level of education or economic status, I couldn’t move past the statistics that put black women at greater risk.

Up to one in four known pregnancies will end in miscarriage. And for black women, the numbers are alarmingly higher. According to an analysis of 4.6 million pregnancies in seven countries, the risk of miscarriage for black women is 43% higher than for white women.

In the black community, women have traditionally been taught to carry their burdens in silence (keep your affairs a secret) even after something as devastating as the loss of a pregnancy. We are conditioned to do what I did back then and move forward as we try to leave behind the long list of statistics that tell us our lives are in danger from every direction, whether from health care risks to social injustices or other stressors.

During my miscarriage, I was a woman who was afraid, bleeding, and in excruciating pain, and in desperate need of safe emergency medical care. Thanks to the administration of mifepristone, I was allowed to have dignity during my miscarriage. It’s what every woman deserves, whether facing a life-threatening miscarriage or seeking an abortion.

I learned from my experience that every miscarriage is important. Women should have access to any medication and counseling we need to help us heal and that includes mifepristone. What we don’t need is criminalization by politicians and punitive reproductive laws that have long been out of step with public opinion. Despite continued political attacks on women’s reproductive rights, more than 61% of American adults say abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to the Pew Research Center.

After the United States Department of Justice asked the Supreme Court to intervene, Justice Samuel Alito issued a temporary order to preserve the status quo, guaranteeing access to the drug and giving judges more time to study the issue.

I hope the judges can put politics aside and focus on the science surrounding the safety of mifepristone, a medication I fortunately had access to when my life was in danger. Mifepristone, a synthetic steroid, is even safer than common prescription drugs such as penicillin and Viagra.

Following science demands that, regardless of where you stand on the abortion issue, cases like mine and millions of other women who for years have safely used this medication for complications related to miscarriages must be considered.

We do not know how the legal fight over medical abortion will play out. But women across the country (in both Democratic and Republican states) are watching. Punitive laws like the one signed last week by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis seek to criminalize reproductive care providers. And worse still, they are stripping us of rights that men take for granted; it is unlikely that the law prohibits them from making health care decisions for their own bodies.

It must end. And I bet that whether it’s with our voice or our votes, women will have the last word.