WASHINGTON, April 20 (Reuters) - Use of the drug misoprostol on its own to terminate pregnancies is on the rise in the United States as providers seek a preemptive alternative while a ban on abortion pill mifepristone is being considered in court. Misoprostol is already part of the only medication abortion protocol approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but only when taken in combination with mifepristone. The drug, which the FDA first approved in 1988 for gastric ulcers, is often prescribed off-label to treat miscarriages or induce abortions. "If providers are forced to stop providing mifepristone, misoprostol alone is also safe and effective," said Dr. Ushma Upadhyay, a public health professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Because misoprostol is approved for medication abortion in the United States as part of the two-drug combination, prescribing it alone to terminate pregnancies would also be considered off-label.

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