Senator Murray Statement on Supreme Court Preserving Access to Medication Abortion Nationwide

ICYMI: Following Emergency Stay, Murray, Schumer, Jeffries Lead 250+ Democrats in Supreme Court Fight to Protect Mifepristone Access, Women's Health Care, and FDA Authority

Washington, D.C. - Today U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and a senior member and former chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, issued the following statement in response to the Supreme Court pausing a nationwide ban on mail-order and telehealth access to the abortion medication mifepristone, staying a Fifth Circuit order that required patients to set up in-person doctor visits:

"I'm relieved that, for now, women across this country can still get the medication they need-and that doctors can keep prescribing it the way medical evidence says they should. For now, the Supreme Court has continued to preserve access to mifepristone and paused an absurd ruling that attempted to throw decades of scientific safety data out the window.

"But the reality is that a panel of extremist judges with no medical training came within an inch of overriding the FDA on a drug that more than seven million American women have safely used-and access to reproductive health care remains under serious threat as this case is argued in the Fifth Circuit.

"And let's be honest, this is the world the Dobbs decision has forced American women to live in. Extremist judges tried to take a medication used in the majority of abortions in this country, and used every day for miscarriage care, and make it harder to get in every single state.

"We need to be eyes wide open: Anti-abortion politicians and lawyers are going to keep filing cases until they find a courtroom willing to either restrict or ban abortion nationwide. Reproductive rights are under attack: Mifepristone today, IVF tomorrow, and contraception after that. None of this is hypothetical. We are seeing the anti-abortion playbook unfold in real time. I'm ready to keep fighting for reproductive freedom-America's pro-choice majority has to dig in and get ready to fight back against every single attack and keep fighting so that we finally restore abortion rights for every woman in every state."

Two-thirds of U.S. adults oppose banning medication abortion. The overwhelming majority of Americans don't want abortion legislated at all.

Senator Murray leads the Democratic caucus on reproductive health care issues, and she has led the fight in Congress to protect and expand access to mifepristone. Senator Murray led the Congressional response to FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a lawsuit brought by Republican anti-abortion extremists trying to rip away access to mifepristone-Murray led multiple amicus briefs, organized her colleagues, and raised the alarm at every turn. In June 2024, the Supreme Court dismissed the case on standing, but Murray made clear that "the nationwide threat to medication abortion has not gone away-far from it. If Donald Trump and his anti-abortion allies return to power, they will do everything they can to rip away access to mifepristone and ban abortion nationwide."

Senator Murray has grilled Trump's former FDA Commissioner, Marty Makary, on access to mifepristone at every opportunity she's had-including at a HELP Committee hearing on his nomination in March 2025, and an Appropriations Agriculture-FDA subcommittee hearing in May of last year. In 2023, Senator Murray pressed national pharmacies including Costco to ensure access to mifepristone, and in August, when Costco announced it would no longer sell mifepristone at its stores, Murray spoke out to demand they reverse course.

In November of 2025, Senator Murray led the entire Senate Democratic caucus in a letter to HHS Secretary Kennedy and FDA Commissioner Makary expressing alarm over the Trump administration's plans to conduct "its own review of the evidence" on the safety and effectiveness of mifepristone. Murray's letter laid into the recent junk science "report" on mifepristone put out by the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC)-an avowedly anti-abortion think tank-that appears to be the basis for the Trump administration's announced review of mifepristone. "By elevating the sham EPPC report as rationale for restricting access to mifepristone, HHS is blatantly undermining well-established science and weaponizing disinformation to fit the Trump administration's clear agenda to cut off abortion access in any way possible," Murray and the senators wrote.

At the start of this year, Murray blasted her Republican counterparts on the Senate HELP Committee for holding a sham hearing to discredit medication abortion. Earlier this month, Murray led Congressional Democrats in submitting an amicus brief to the Supreme Court to protect access to mifepristone.

Throughout her career, Murray has beat back countless Republican attacks on reproductive care and other family planning services-and she is widely credited with successfully pushing the Bush administration's FDA to follow the science and make Plan B available over the counter.

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