ICYMI: 250+ Democrats in Congress File Amicus Brief Urging Supreme Court to Prevent Dangerous Ruling From Restricting Access to Mifepristone Nationwide & Upending FDA Approval Process – MÁS AQUÍ
Washington DC – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP), issued the following statement on a new amicus brief filed earlier today by 147 Republican Members of Congress urging the U.S. Supreme Court to uphold the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ partial denial of a stay pending appeal of federal district court Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s ruling revoking the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) more than 20-year-old approval of mifepristone, a safe and effective medication that is used in more than half of all abortions nationwide and is safer than Tylenol. Leaving even part of this harmful ruling in place significantly restricts access to the drug nationwide and ultimately overrides FDA’s scientific judgement.
67 Republican Members of Congress filed a similar brief in support of the lawsuit at the district court level, and 69 Republican Members of Congress filed an amicus with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. The lower court rulings threaten to deny patients in all 50 states—including those like Washington state, with strong abortion protections—access to a safe and effective option for ending an early pregnancy, and pose an unprecedented threat to FDA’s congressionally-mandated drug approval process.
“Today, nearly 150 of my Republican colleagues in Congress filed a brief with the United States Supreme Court in support of a truly dangerous lawsuit that seeks to not only deny patients in every state a safe and effective drug used widely in medication abortion and miscarriage care—but that would also threaten patients’ access to all manner of other medications by upending the FDA’s ability to simply do its job.
“And I just have to say: I am astounded by my Republican colleagues’ cruel disregard for women’s right to control their own bodies, their eagerness to defy the American people by asking a court to deny patients access to an FDA-approved drug, and their complete indifference to how overruling the FDA’s experts with an unprecedented ruling by a sole federal district court would upend the agency’s authority to do its job and threaten patients’ ability to get so many other critical medications.
“Make no mistake: what Republicans in Congress are asking the Supreme Court to do is ignore the science, the law, and decades of evidence demonstrating that mifepristone is safe and effective in order to decimate access to the medication in all 50 states. Anyone who cares about women’s reproductive rights, patients’ ability to get the medications they need, or the FDA’s authority to just do its job should be furious that Congressional Republicans are backing this dangerous lawsuit.”
Senator Murray has been leading the response to this dangerous lawsuit in Congress. She forcefully denounced Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling in a press call the very next morning with Leader Schumer, helped lead her colleagues in filing an amicus breve before the Fifth Circuit urging a stay of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, subrayado how harmful the Fifth Circuit’s ruling overriding FDA’s experts and imposing outdated restrictions on the drug, and helped lead her colleagues in filing an amicus breve encouraging the Supreme Court to stay the lower court rulings. She will continue to use all tools at her disposal to stop any efforts to restrict access to mifepristone as the Supreme Court weighs the case.
El senador Murray ha sido warning about the tremendous harm this lawsuit could inflict on women and patients in all 50 states—and she has been leading the fight in Congress to protect Americans’ reproductive rights and ability to get medication abortion, as well. She empujado para ampliar el acceso a la mifepristona a medida que el COVID-19 se propagó por primera vez en los EE. UU. y obstruido Los intentos de los republicanos por frenar el acceso a ella en plena pandemia. senador murray aplaudió FDA’s removal of burdensome barriers to mifepristone and has long subrayado that access to medications like mifepristone, which has a strong track record of safety and effectiveness, should be based on science, not politics. Last month, Senator Murray also LED her colleagues in pushing top national pharmacy chains to provide the strongest possible access to mifepristone for patients.
Senator Murray has always fought to make reproductive health care more accessible and affordable for women everywhere–beating back countless Republican attempts to defund Planned Parenthood and other family planning services a lo largo de su carrera, y se le atribuye ampliamente haber presionado con éxito a la administración Bush para que siguiera la ciencia y hiciera Plan B disponible en el mostrador.
Murray condujo a sus colegas at the very outset of this Congress to make crystal clear that Senate Democrats are continuing to fight to protect every American’s reproductive rights and will be a firewall against House Republicans’ continued attacks on our rights—and that’s exactly what she’s doing now. Senator Murray recently helped lead 48 of her colleagues in reintroduciendo the Women’s Health Protection Act to put an end to the chaos Republicans have caused and restore Roe nationwide.
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