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Dr. Nancy Stanwood with U.S. Sen. Blumenthal on Monday: "The reprieve is only temporary."
Connecticut patients seeking an abortion can continue to access — for now — a safe, legal, and decades-old medication that is commonly used across the country to help end a pregnancy in its first trimester.
But the U.S. Supreme Court’s upholding of mifepristone’s federal approval is only temporary. And an ideologically motivated attack on the drug’s legitimacy could still prevail.
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Planned Parenthood Southern New England Chief Medical Officer Nancy Stanwood offered those words of caution Monday morning during a press conference held at the local reproductive health hub’s clinic at 345 Whitney Ave.
Blumenthal, who is a member of the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee, and Stanwood held that presser several days after the U.S. Supreme Court issued an unsigned, one-paragraph decision on Friday that continues the stay on a Texas trial court’s overturning of the federal Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
Translation: That pill, which plays a key role in a commonly used two-drug regimen for ending a pregnancy without surgery, will continue to be available to patients in Connecticut and across the country as a New Orleans-based federal appeals court prepares to take up a controversial trial court decision from earlier this month on May 17. The case could ultimately make its way back to the U.S. Supreme Court to decide on the merits on whether or not the FDA’s approval of mifepristone more than two decades ago should stand.
“The assault on women’s healthcare continues,” Blumenthal said at Monday’s presser. “It’s a war on women.” While the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday keeps mifepristone available for now, “the reprieve is only temporary.” The courts could overturn its approval — and therefore limit its availability across the country, including in pro-choice-friendly states like Connecticut — “at any point.”
Blumenthal criticized Texas federal trial court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision overturning the FDA’s 2000 approval of mifepristone as grounded in a “far-right, extremist, ideological stance” intent on attacking abortion access in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent toppling of Roe v. Wade.
Blumenthal promised to take the lead in filing an amicus curiae along with U.S. Senate colleagues for the appeals court case slated to be heard May 17. “We must fight in the courts” for this safe and legal drug to remain accessible, and for abortion rights to stand.
Stanwood agreed. She criticized the original court case targeting mifepristone’s past federal approval as a “scientifically and legally meritless case.” She said mifepristone is a widely accepted “safe and effective” drug for medication abortions that has been safely used for more than 20 years. “It is the medical standard of care.”
This court case, she continued, represents a “calculated attack on abortion access.”
For now, Stanwood stressed, patients seeking an abortion can continue to access mifepristone at all 14 of Planned Parenthood’s Connecticut sites. “We will continue to provide care” to those seeking it as this legal battle continues.
Asked if he was surprised by the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to continue the stay and keep mifepristone widely available for now, Blumenthal said he was. He said the decision appears to show that “even this court is unwilling to undermine the whole federal drug approval process” by immediately signing off on overturning a decades old decision by the FDA.
For those curious why Blumenthal has a walker, he was injured at the UConn men's basketball celebration parade.