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‘We bought boatloads’: Healey vows to keep abortion pills available in Massachusetts
Gov. Maura Healey said Massachusetts has two years' worth of mifepristone as the country waits for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide the abortion pill's accessibility.
After the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that could limit access to an abortion pill, Gov. Maura Healey said in an interview this week that the drug would remain available in Massachusetts.
She spoke to WCVB on Wednesday about mifepristone, which blocks the progesterone hormone and is the first of two pills taken in a medication abortion, and how the state bought “boatloads” of the drug earlier this year.
“We’re going to make sure that medication abortion remains legal, safe, accessible (and) available to people in our state,” Healey said.
The state has around a two-year supply of the medication. Healey’s administration also added medication abortions — the most common form of the procedure — to an existing law that shields providers from out-of-state prosecution.
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The Supreme Court case that spurred Healey’s statement likely won’t be decided until next summer. The highest court was asked to hear the case by the Biden administration, which seeks to reverse the conservative-leaning Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling.
That ruling would not make the pill illegal, but it would be significantly harder for patients to access mifepristone. The pill would no longer be allowed to be mailed, prescribed via telemedicine, or given to patients by a professional who isn’t a physician — even in states where abortion is still legal.
A decision in June would fall near the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s historic overturning of Roe v. Wade, which resulted in many states outlawing abortion. The 2022 ruling also made access to abortion pills even more important to abortion proponents, and another fight for its opponents.
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“I hope the Supreme Court does the right thing, which is to protect women’s access to needed health care and medication abortion,” Healey said.
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