Press Release California
Press Release
Reproductive Freedom for All Michigan Statement on Supreme Court Hearing Oral Arguments on Medication Abortion Case
For Immediate Release: Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Contact: [email protected]
Reproductive Freedom for All Michigan Statement on Supreme Court Hearing Oral Arguments on Medication Abortion Case
Washington, DC — Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in anti-abortion extremists’ case to determine whether to impose additional restrictions on mifepristone. While this safe, effective medication remains available for now, if the Court rules in favor of anti-abortion groups, it could roll back abortion access in our country even further by placing extreme and medically unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone in all 50 states—including in Michigan—impacting at least 64.5 million people nationwide.
Reproductive Freedom for All Director of Michigan Campaigns, Shanay Watson-Whittaker, released the following statement:
“If the U.S. Supreme Court decides to rule in favor of anti-abortion extremists and restrict mifepristone nationwide, it would have catastrophic effects for people in our state and those who come from surrounding states seeking care. Michiganders just cemented abortion access into our state constitution, and any decision rolling back access flies in the face of our values. The Supreme Court must follow the law and rule against this baseless case.”
This baseless case stems from a federal lawsuit filed by the anti-abortion group Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in a judge-shopped Texas district court challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in its decades-old approval of mifepristone, one of the two medications typically used to provide medication abortion care. While the lawsuit sought to revoke the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in an attempt to pull the medication from the shelves nationwide, the Fifth has previously turned down that challenge and the Supreme Court is instead hearing arguments on whether to reinstate unnecessary restrictions on mifepristone following a federal court’s ruling on the matter.
Medication abortion using mifepristone, which has been used safely for more than two decades, accounts for more than half of all abortion care nationwide and is now even more important in a post-Dobbs world. If it were further restricted throughout the country, it would create more barriers to accessing the most commonly used method of abortion care and miscarriage management. Attacking medication abortion care is the latest attempt to further roll back abortion access nationwide. Anti-abortion groups—and the politicians they bankroll—have ramped up attacks on it as part of their strategy to push access to care entirely out of reach.
Reproductive Freedom for All has been working alongside partners across the reproductive rights, health, and justice movement to collect signatures for the People’s Petition, which advocates for everyone to have access to medication abortion.
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For over 50 years, Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice America) has fought to protect and advance reproductive freedom at the federal and state levels—including access to abortion care, birth control, pregnancy and post-partum care, and paid family leave—for everybody. Reproductive Freedom for All is powered by its more than 4 million members from every state and congressional district in the country, representing the 8 in 10 Americans who support legal abortion.