Chicago – Attorney General Kwame Raoul today, with 24 attorneys general, filed a brief supporting continued access to medication abortion and other essential health care for all Americans. In the brief filed in the United States Supreme Court, Raoul and the coalition support the federal government’s request for an emergency stay of a lower court decision in Texas that, if allowed to take effect, would drastically reduce access to safe abortion care and miscarriage management for millions of people across the country.
“Let me be clear: mifepristone continues to be available in Illinois because of our proactive legal action. Regardless, I will continue to advocate for all Americans to have the same access to medication abortion that has been safely and effectively used by millions of patients for more than two decades,” Raoul said. “I continue to closely monitor these quickly moving cases and am committed to using all available tools to protect access to abortion in Illinois and across the country.”
On April 7, a single judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas ordered the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to suspend its approval of mifepristone, which took place in 2000. On April 13, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the 2000 approval but left in place the district court’s stay on other FDA regulatory actions regarding mifepristone.
Earlier this year, Attorney General Raoul proactively joined a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington to preserve access to mifepristone in Illinois. On April 7, the judge issued an order preventing the FDA from reducing the availability of medication abortion in Illinois and the 17 states participating in that proactive lawsuit. On April 13, the court clarified that its order protects access to reproductive health care in Illinois and the other plaintiff states, notwithstanding the orders in the Texas case.
Joining Raoul in filing the brief are the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.
