Connecticut Attorney General William Tong joined a coalition of state attorneys general on Friday to voice their support for defending access to medication abortion across the country.
Among the other states joining the amicus brief filed in Alliance of Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are fellow New England states Maine and Massachusetts, among others.
The attorneys general are asking the court to reject a challenge from anti-abortion groups to revoke FDA approval for mifepristone, a drug used for medication abortion. They argue that revoking approval of the drug would “drastically reduce access to safe abortion care and miscarriage management for millions of people across the country.” This would include states where medication abortion remains legal, like Connecticut.
“Mifepristone has been safely used for medication abortion for more than two decades. This lawsuit is one more radical effort to reject science and inject partisan politics into the doctor-patient relationship,” argued AG Tong in a statement. “The ban this group is seeking would impact every state—including Connecticut—and would force women who choose to end their pregnancies into unnecessary surgical procedures. This reckless challenge has zero basis in science or the law and must be rejected.”
Mifepristone was first approved by the FDA in 2000 and is a single-dose pill used for early-term abortions. According to the AG’s office, the drug has been used in over five million medication abortions since its approval and decades of research and clinical trials have proved the drug’s safety and efficacy.
The also stressed the importance of the drug in providing safe abortions for low-income and rural communities, since it can be taken at home and does not require spending time in a doctor’s office or clinic or undergoing costly and potentially dangerous surgical procedures.
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