Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold access to the abortion pill mifepristone, calling it the “correct decision.”
“Today’s ruling by the Supreme Court upholding full access to safe, effective mifepristone is the right decision for millions of women nationwide,” Pelosi said in a statement following the Thursday ruling. “This unanimous decision — rightfully declaring that the plaintiff lacks legal standing to challenge FDA actions — rejects a far-right attack on women’s health freedom more rooted in a desire to punish and control women than in science or law.”
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the plaintiffs — a group of anti-abortion doctors — do not have any legal basis to challenge access to mifepristone, a common drug used in medication 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 U.S. abortions.
The ruling will allow the abortion medication to stay available to patients up to the 10th week of pregnancy and be delivered through the mail.
Pelosi also took aim at former President Trump’s MAGA movement, which stands for his slogan “Make America Great Again,” pointing to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“Just two years after ripping away fundamental reproductive rights with its outrageous Dobbs decision, the MAGA movement continues its onslaught of anti-women, anti-freedom attacks,” she said. “While the Supreme Court made the correct decision today, it must not be forgotten that it is because of Donald Trump and this Court that women today have less freedom than their mothers and their grandmothers.”
Pelosi, a staunch critic of Trump, argued the MAGA movement “will not rest” until a nationwide abortion ban is achieved.
President Biden struck a similar tone Thursday when he stopped short of celebrating the Supreme Court ruling and argued the fight for reproductive rights in the U.S. is an ongoing issue.
“Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. It does not change the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom,” the president said Thursday in a statement. “It does not change the fact that the right for a woman to get the treatment she needs is imperiled if not impossible in many states.”
Trump, Biden’s likely presidential rival this November, said earlier this year he would not sign a national abortion ban if reelected and such a bill passed Congress, and he emphasized abortion policy should be determined by individual states.
“Now the states have it, and the states are putting out what they want,” the former president said while speaking to reporters in April. “It’s the will of the people.”
The Biden campaign in quickly dismissed Trump’s remarks about not signing a nationwide abortion ban, pointing to his track record on the issue to argue the former president would threaten access to the procedure if he were reelected.
While a federal abortion ban is likely to face a slew of challenges, abortion advocates have warned a second term with the former president in the White House could risk access to abortion medication, regardless of congressional action.
