States like California and Washington are rushing to stockpile thousands of abortion pills after a Texas judge suspended FDA approval of mifepristone, which is part of a regimen that constitutes the most common method of procuring an abortion.
The Department of Justice has already asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for a stay of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s nationwide injunction, which is due to take effect one week after his ruling last Friday. Additionally, Judge Thomas Rice of Washington state has issued a competing order that the FDA must maintain the drug’s availability in 17 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia. However, blue states are not waiting for legal resolution to act.
“In response to this extremist ban on a medication abortion drug, our state has secured a stockpile of an alternative medication abortion drug to ensure that Californians continue to have access to safe reproductive health treatments…Medication abortion remains legal in California,” explained Newsom in a statement.
California negotiated and purchased an emergency stockpile of misoprostol. More than 250,000 pills have already arrived and 2 million more are able to be purchased through CalRx.
Washington state has purchased 30,000 doses of mifepristone through the state’s correctional system and an additional 10,000 through the University of Washington, Politico reported.
In Massachusetts, Governor Laura Healey requested the University of Massachusetts Amherst purchase approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone to ensure sufficient coverage in the state for more than a year, according to a statement from her office.
Newsom recently led 21 governors, including Healey and Washington’s Jay Inslee, to create the Reproductive Freedom Alliance “to strengthen abortion firewalls across America.” California has shared the negotiated terms of the misoprostol purchase agreement with all states in the Reproductive Freedom Alliance to secure the drug at a low cost.
Misoprostol is combined with mifepristone, the primary drug used to obtain an abortion. While mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone and terminates the pregnancy, misoprostol causes contractions to expel the unborn child. However, misoprostol can also be used on its own to procure an abortion.
As blue states announce their plans to fight back, so too are the executives of drug companies throughout the country. A letter signed by over 400 executives includes representatives from Pfizer, which makes a small percentage of the U.S. supply of misoprostol, and many other biotech companies.
The company leaders argued that Kacsmaryk’s decision would challenge the foundation of the regulatory system for all medicines in the U.S.
“As an industry we count on the FDA’s autonomy and authority to bring new medicines to patients under a reliable regulatory process for drug evaluation and approval,” the statement read. “Adding regulatory uncertainty to the already inherently risky work of discovering and developing new medicines will likely have the effect of reducing incentives for investment, endangering the innovation that characterizes our industry.”
“If courts can overturn drug approvals without regard for science or evidence, or for the complexity required to fully vet the safety and efficacy of new drugs, any medicine is at risk for the same outcome as mifepristone,” the statement continued.
Danco, the maker of Mifeprex, the brand version of mifepristone, has filed an appeal similar to that of the Department of Justice against Kacsmaryk’s order.
The competing rulings in Texas and Washington make it likely that higher courts will intervene in an expedited fashion.