Senator Murray Statement on Supreme Court Staying Unprecedented Attack on Medication Abortion and FDA’s Ability to Do Its Job

ICYMI: Senator Murray leads 250+ Democrats in Congress in filing amicus brief urging Supreme Court to prevent dangerous lower court ruling from taking effect – MORE HERE

Washington, D.C. – 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 the Supreme Court’s stay of a lower court ruling that, if it were to go into effect, would decimate patients’ access to mifepristone, a safe and effective drug used in more than half of all abortions, in every state and would pose an unprecedented threat to the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) authority to simply do its job. The stay allows mifepristone to remain on the market under its existing FDA approval while the merits of the case are under review at the Fifth Circuit.

“This stay offers a temporary sigh of relief after anti-abortion extremists determined to control women’s bodies by any means possible have caused weeks of chaos and confusion. Mifepristone, a safe and effective medication approved by the FDA 23 years ago, for now remains on the shelves and available to women and patients.

“But this fight is not nearly over—and let’s just be clear: it is absolutely outrageous this case ever made it this far. Again, mifepristone was approved by the FDA after careful review over twenty years ago—and has been safely used by more than 5 million women in the years since. Only now—after overturning Roe—have Republican extremists decided to file an unprecedented lawsuit that would not only deny women in every state access to this critical drug, but would threaten patients’ access to all kinds of other drugs by upending and politicizing the FDA’s expert-driven approvals process.

“Enough already. We’ve now got to win this case for good—to protect patients’ access to a critical drug that’s safer than Tylenol and to protect the FDA’s trusted ability to simply do its job. My colleagues and I will be focused on doing just that, and I urge the administration to continue aggressively fighting this dangerous lawsuit.”

Senator Murray has been leading the response to this dangerous lawsuit in Congress. She forcefully denounced Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s ruling in a press call the very next morning with Leader Schumer, helped lead her colleagues in filing an amicus brief before the Fifth Circuit urging a stay of Judge Kacsmaryk’s ruling, underscored how harmful the Fifth Circuit’s ruling overriding FDA’s experts and imposing medically-unnecessary restrictions on the drug was, and helped lead her colleagues in filing an amicus brief 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 case proceeds.

Senator Murray has been warning about the tremendous harm this lawsuit could inflict on women and patients in all 50 states—and she has long helped lead the fight in Congress to protect Americans’ reproductive rights and ability to get medication abortion. She pushed to expand access to mifepristone as COVID-19 first spread across the U.S. and blocked Republicans’ attempts to curb access to it in the middle of the pandemic. Senator Murray applauded FDA’s removal of burdensome barriers to mifepristone and has long underscored that access to medications like mifepristone, which has a strong track record of safety and effectiveness, should be based on science, not politics. In March, 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 over the course of her career, and she is widely credited with successfully pushing the Bush administration to follow the science and make Plan B available over the counter.

At the outset of this Congress, Senator Murray led her colleagues in making 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. That’s exactly what she’s doing now.

###