Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to maintain access to the abortion pill mifepristone, calling it the “correct decision.”
“Today’s Supreme Court ruling upholding full access to safe and effective mifepristone is the right decision for millions of women across the country,” Pelosi said in a statement following Thursday’s ruling. challenge the FDA’s actions – rejects a far-right attack on women’s health freedom more rooted in the desire to punish and control women than in science or the law.”
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that a group of anti-abortion doctors have no legal basis to challenge access to mifepristone, a common medication used in medical abortion.
The high court’s unanimous decision overturned a lower court ruling that would have made it more difficult to obtain mifepristone, which is already used in about two-thirds of abortions in the United States.
The decision will allow the abortion medication to be available to patients until the 10th week of pregnancy and to be delivered by mail.
Pelosi also took aim at former President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) movement, pointing to the overturning of Roe v. Wade. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022.
“Just two years after destroying fundamental reproductive rights with its outrageous Dobbs decision, the MAGA movement continues its onslaught of anti-women and anti-freedom attacks,” she said. “Although the Supreme Court made the right decision today, we must not forget that it is because of Donald Trump and this Court that women today have less freedom than their mothers and grandmothers.”
Pelosi, an outspoken critic of Trump, argued that the MAGA movement “will not rest” until a national abortion ban is achieved.
Biden struck a similar tone on Thursday, when he stopped short of celebrating the Supreme Court decision and argued that the fight for reproductive rights in the US is an ongoing issue.
“Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. This does not change the fact that the Supreme Court annulled Roe v. two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom,” the president said Thursday in a statement. “That doesn’t change the fact that a woman’s right to receive the treatment she needs is endangered, if not impossible, in many states.”
Trump, Biden’s likely presidential rival in November, said earlier this year that he would not sign a national abortion ban if he were reelected and such a bill passed Congress, and he emphasized that abortion policy should be determined by individual states.
“Now the states have it, and the states are releasing what they want,” the former president said when speaking to reporters in April. “It’s the will of the people.”
Biden’s campaign quickly pushed back on Trump’s comments about not signing a national abortion ban, pointing to his record on the issue to argue that the former president would threaten access to the procedure if he were re-elected.
While the federal abortion ban will likely face a number of challenges, abortion advocates have warned that a second term with the former president in the White House could jeopardize access to abortion medications regardless of congressional action.
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
