Cortez Masto sounds alarm over ‘far-right’ Supreme Court taking on abortion pill case

The U.S. Supreme Court’s announcement Wednesday that it would hear a case that will decide abortion pill access across the U.S. did not come as a surprise to Nevada Democratic U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto.

“We’ve seen the tragic consequences of abortion restrictions across the country and it started with this court,” Cortez Masto said in an interview Thursday. “Remember, we had former president Trump and Mitch McConnell stack the United States Supreme Court with these far-right judges in the hopes that they would overturn Roe v. Wade, and that’s exactly what they’ve done.”

“We see now that it continues the erosion of the rights of women and further restricts their access to essential medicine,” she said.

Mifepristone, the pill at the center of the case, is used in over half of pregnancy terminations in the nation as a part of a two-pharmaceutical procedure, with misoprostol as the second medication. Both drugs are used in miscarriage treatment.

The case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA, will be the first abortion-related case since the court overturned Roe V. Wade in June 2022. 

Mifepristone has a  well-documented safety record and was first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2000.

Nevada voters in 1990 passed a referendum protecting the right to abortion through the 24th week of pregnancy. The referendum also directed that the law could only be changed by another voter referendum – not by the state legislature.

Shortly after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, abortion became outlawed, either by old “trigger” laws taking effect, by new legislation, or a combination of the two. Nevada health care providers reported seeing more out-of-state patients. Anti-abortion rights advocates also began to expand abortion bans to include criminalizing traveling out of state for an abortion.

In January 2023, the FDA finalized rules allowing abortion pills to be mail-ordered instead of picked up in person, greatly increasing access to the drugs via home delivery, pharmacies and more — especially in rural and frontier communities where there is a shortage of OBGYNs and OBGYNS are less likely to perform abortions. 

“For the last 20 years this drug has been safe and effective for women to use,” Cortez Masto said. But if the court upholds the ruling of a Texas judge who effectively overruled the FDA, “there are women in Northern Nevada who will not be able to access this essential medication after consulting with their doctor, because they won’t have access to it at pharmacies. That means that they will have to travel to a doctor’s office — and you and I both know there are women who travel four hours to get to their doctors,” Cortez Masto said, highlighting that much of rural and frontier Nevada live in medical deserts. 

Cortez Masto noted that the strongest legal action to protect access to care is passing the Women’s Health Protection Act, legislation to enshrine Roe v. Wade in federal law. The bill was introduced and read in the Senate in March, but no action has been taken since, and the legislation has no change of passage in the Republican-controlled House.

“We need to pass not only that legislation, we also need to ensure that we are electing pro-choice candidates,” Cortez Masto said.

By taking up the the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA case, the Supreme Court, like it did with the Dobbs case in the summer of 2022, is once again poised to put abortion at the center of public debate and discussion in the months leading up to an election.

Cortez Masto noted the overturning of Roe v. Wade motivated Nevadans to vote for her and other Democratic candidates across the country in the 2022 midterm elections. 

“After talking to so many Nevadans, they were outraged by just the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Cortez Masto said. Voters were “outraged that the court and right-wing elected officials thought it was okay to restrict women’s access to not just abortion, but to essential health care and reproductive freedom,” she said.

“We are a proud pro-choice state, two-thirds of our voters support a woman’s right to choose, and the majority of this country supports a woman’s right to choose.” 

In addition to jeopardizing access tosafe abortion and miscarriage medicines, the abortion pill case also calls into question the legal authority of the FDA to approve and regulate medicines. 

“A dark cloud looms over the drug approval and development processes as the Supreme Court weighs allowing politics to trump science,” said Leslie Dach, chair of Protect Our Care a nonprofit for increasing access to affordable health care. “If the lower courts’ decisions stand, any third party with a political agenda can challenge a medication they object to, and judges could ignore expert opinions and arbitrarily rip away lifesaving drugs and vaccines from patients who rely on them.  The entire FDA approval process would be thrown into chaos and millions of people across the nation would suffer.”

This is the first time a court has ordered the FDA to withdraw a drug’s approval under Congressional delegation. The prospect of judges overturning FDA approvals prompted hundreds of U.S. pharmaceutical executives to sign a letter supporting the FDA’s legal authority to approve and regulate medicines.