Attempts to discredit the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug amount to partisan attacks on science and medicine, the vice president said.
“This is not just an attack on women’s fundamental freedoms. It is an attack on the very foundation of our public health system,” Harris said.
Access to abortion pills is seen as one of the next major battlegrounds in the national debate over reproductive rights. Seven months after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, striking down protections for the right to abortion, medication has become a leading way for women to access abortion, including those in states that have restricted it.
The arguments center on mifepristone, which is part of a two-drug regimen for medication abortion. It was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2000, and the FDA has said it is safe and effective.
The FDA approved retail pharmacies to distribute abortion medication pills in January. The Justice Department then moved to protect access, issuing an opinion saying the U.S. Postal Service can deliver the pills in states where abortion is banned or severely restricted.
Meanwhile, antiabortion groups have turned their focus to the pills. Conservative groups brought the case in Texas, seeking to reverse federal approval of the drug. They claim the drug is unsafe and allege that the FDA failed to study it carefully enough.
Legal experts have widely said the arguments lack merit, The Post has reported, but because conservative judges will likely decide the case, pro-abortion advocates have begun preparing for its potential impact. The decision could ultimately land before the Supreme Court.
The attorneys general of 22 Republican-leaning states this month filed a brief arguing that the FDA “undermined the public interest.”
Harris said the Biden administration would push to protect women’s reproductive rights, including by examining how “to highlight this issue” of abortion medication access and fight for the rights of Americans to “have access to the medication that they need.”
“Most Americans could look in their medicine cabinet, where they will find medication prescribed by a doctor that they use on a daily basis and have available to them because the FDA engaged in a process of determining the efficacy and safety of that medication. Mifepristone is no exception to that process,” she said.
Caroline Kitchener contributed to this report.
