Washington state’s government on Tuesday said it had purchased a three-year supply of the abortion pill mifepristone.
The move comes as conservative U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas is weighing whether to halt sales of the abortion pill nationwide—even in states where abortion remains legal—while he considers a Texas lawsuit seeks to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of mifepristone.
The lawsuit was brought by a Christian group in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling last June in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturning Roe v Wade and the Constitutional right to abortion.
Since June, roughly half of all U.S. states have banned abortion or are likely to do so, including 12 which are imposing a near-total ban, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which advocates reproductive health.
Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) said he directed the state’s Department of Corrections, which has a pharmacy license, to purchase the medication last month. According to Inslee’s office, the full shipment was delivered on March 31.
Medication abortion—a two-pill combination of mifepristone and misoprostol—is the most common form of abortion in the U.S. The combo was approved by the FDA more than two decades ago.
