Following last week’s Supreme Court decision to temporarily allow abortion pills to be received via mail, Representative Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX) introduced a bill today that reaffirms the pill’s U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval.
The recent Supreme Court ruling temporarily blocked a lower-court decision to restrict access to Mifepristone, also known as the abortion pill. For now, this means any patient can receive the medication by mail and through telehealth providers.
Rep. Fletcher, the Vice Chair and Whip of the Reproductive Freedom Caucus, is pushing the Protecting Reproductive Freedom Act to argue that, since the FDA approved Mifepristone, this overrides state abortion-pill bans or restrictions.
“More than 25 years ago, the FDA approved mifepristone as safe and effective,” Rep. Fletcher said. "That science has not changed.”
Instead, Rep. Fletcher said what has changed is the effort by anti-abortion activists to use the courts to achieve what they couldn’t legislatively.
“[Anti-abortion activists want to] ban abortion across the country, one medication at a time.”
In Texas, the debate over abortion access remains deeply divisive.
Texas Politics recently reported on Rep. Brandon Gill’s (R-TX) questioning over another piece of reproductive rights legislation, in which he called abortion “evil and barbaric.”
Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY) is also advocating for this bill, and agreed that the pill’s scientific backing and FDA approval should be the only considerations for its legality.
“These efforts to undermine the safety of abortion medication have nothing to do with science or medicine and everything to do with radical groups whose only goal is a national abortion ban,” Rep. Ryan said.
Rep. Ryan said a woman’s right to choose is a part of “fundamental American freedoms,” and no law should prevent her from exercising those rights.
“These deeply personal and private medical decisions should be made by women, their health care providers and their families, not by extremist judges or politicians,” Rep. Ryan said.
