As expected, a conservative Texas judge on Friday delivered a ruling overturning the federal government’s approval of mifepristone, throwing access to the pill commonly used in medication abortions into uncertainty more than 20 years after it was approved.
The Dunleavy administration through far-right Attorney General Treg Taylor was one of 22 states to sign onto the lawsuit that comes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, despite the right to an abortion being enshrined in Alaska’s constitutional precedence.
In response to the ruling, Planned Parenthood Great Northwest CEO Rebecca Gibron stressed that access to the procedure will remain safe, legal and accessible.
“But let me be clear: Today’s decision has not and will not impact access to medication abortion in Alaska. Patients can still come to us for safe, effective medication abortion. We are prepared to continue providing care no matter the final ruling in this case,” she said in a prepared statement. “We won’t let this decision stop us from providing safe, legal abortion care.”
The outcome of the Texas ruling isn’t immediately clear. The impact on availability would have gone into effect seven days from the ruling, but that ruling has already been appealed by the federal government. A ruling in Washington in a separate but related case required the drug to continue to be available in the 17 states—which doesn’t include Alaska—that are party to that case.
Advocates have worried that any limitations on medication abortions in Alaska could hit people living or working in rural Alaska particularly hard.
According to reporting earlier this year by KTOO/KDLG, abortion medications account for about half of all abortions provided by Planned Parenthood in Alaska. Mifepristone has typically been the preferred medication used in those cases, but the health provider said it can turn to misoprostol-only abortions, which have an effectivity rate of about 85-95%.
“Everyone should have the ability to make their own decisions about their body, life, and future. For over 20 years, mifepristone has helped expand access to abortion care, allowing patients to make their own private medical decisions,” Gibron continued. “The decision to rescind the FDA’s approval of mifepristone was a purely political one made by an activist conservative judge, with a goal of making it harder to access medication abortion.”
In the bigger picture
The Alaska Supreme Court has ruled that the right to an abortion is protected under the Alaska Constitution’s strong privacy clause, which would require a constitutional amendment or a constituitonal convention (which was soundly rejected by voters in the 2022 election). However, that hasn’t stopped Gov. Mike Dunleavy from trying to attack Alaskan’s access to the procedure through other venues.
Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the governor and Attorney General Treg Taylor signed on in support of this lawsuit attacking the FDA’s approval of mifepristone and also successfully threatened Walgreens into not carrying such abortion drugs despite its legality. At his state of the state, the governor pledged to make Alaska “the most pro-life state in the entire country.”
Prior to the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Dunleavy also sought to punish Alaska’s judiciary by vetoing its budget for overturning a law that sought to limit access of Medicaid recipients to abortions. That veto itself was ultimately found to be an illegal overstepping of the separation of powers and became grounds for the recall against the governor.
Matt Acuña Buxton is a long-time political reporter who has written for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and The Midnight Sun political blog. He also authors the daily politics newsletter, The Alaska Memo, and can frequently be found live-tweeting public meetings on Twitter.