Blumenthal Applauds FDA Approval of New Label for Medication Abortion

(Hartford, CT) – U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) today released the following statement after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a new label for Mifeprex (mifepristone), a medicine used in medication abortion. The new label reflects evidence-based protocols recommended by the World Health Organization, the American Medical Association, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, Planned Parenthood, and the Society for Family Planning. The new label is additional evidence that medication abortion is safe for virtually all women.

“Improving use of and access to medication abortion will mean that safe, legal reproductive care is less contingent on where you live. Among the numerous, onerous, nonmedical restrictions on reproductive care, some states were requiring doctors to follow an outdated, inferior, less effective label approved in 2000. Although today’s action has immediate, positive repercussions for women in Ohio, Texas and North Dakota – states that required following the old label – much more must be done to ensure that women are free to make decisions about what is best for them without political interference. Women's health care decisions should be between a woman and her doctors – that is the essence of the constitutionally protected right of privacy.”

In 2013, Senator Blumenthal first introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would protect a woman’s right to safe and legal abortion by stopping restrictive regulations and laws – such as those in place in states including Texas and North Dakota – intended to curtail reproductive health services for women. This legislation would prohibit laws that impose burdensome requirements on access to reproductive health services such as requiring doctors to perform tests and procedures that doctors have deemed unnecessary or preventing doctors from prescribing and dispensing medication as is medically appropriate. Other examples of laws that make it more difficult for a woman to access an abortion include: restrictions on medical training for future abortion providers, requirements concerning the physical layout of clinics where abortions are performed, and forced waiting periods for patients.

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