Massachusetts’s stockpile of the common abortion pill mifepristone has been untouched for over a year since Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) purchased 15,000 doses of the medication following legal challenges to the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug.
Healey made the effort to cultivate a mifepristone stockpile following the successful legal challenge against the FDA’s approval and subsequent deregulation of mifepristone in a Texas federal district court in 2023. The case was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments in March.
A spokesperson for Healey confirmed to the Washington Examiner that the $700,000 stockpile of the drug has been preserved as the accessibility of the drug remains pending before the Supreme Court.
“We will evaluate next steps based on the Court’s ruling, but no matter what, mifepristone and access to reproductive health care will remain protected in Massachusetts,” the spokesperson for Healey said.
Currently pending before the court is whether the FDA had the authority in 2021 to remove in-person dispensing requirements for mifepristone, which enabled healthcare providers to provide the pill to patients by mail.
Also before the court is whether there is sufficient scientific evidence to substantiate the FDA’s 2016 increase in the gestational age limit for the drug to 10 weeks gestation, as opposed to eight weeks, which was the standard when the drug was initially approved in 2000.
Anti-abortion advocates contend that in-person screening requirements before dispensing mifepristone are a key point in preserving the health of the woman to determine the gestational age and to rule out abnormalities, such as a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy.
Abortion supporters, however, see mifepristone as essential to abortion and miscarriage treatment and say that access to the pill by mail closes the gap for women in rural communities without access to in-person facilities.
In April 2023, Healey requested that the University of Massachusetts Amherst purchase 15,000 doses of mifepristone, estimated at the time to “ensure sufficient coverage in the state for more than a year.” The institution was given the responsibility of purchasing the medication because it had the necessary certifications to order the drug in mass.
UMass Amherst confirmed to the Boston Herald that the entire shipment of mifepristone was transferred to the state Department of Public Health.
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The spokesperson for Healey did not elaborate on how the administration plans to use the pills depending upon the outcome of the case.
The Guttmacher Institute, a supporter of abortion rights, reported that medication abortion involving mifepristone accounted for nearly two-thirds of all abortions in the United States.