Gillibrand: Texas mifepristone ruling an ‘outrage’

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Sunday called a federal judge in Texas’s decision to block the abortion drug mifepristone an “outrage” and an attack on the right to privacy.

“So to take away the right to have medicine is an extension of taking away this right to privacy, to say we can’t have medicine sent by doctors by mail to people across the country is further invading into this right to privacy, where the court and government has a right to what’s in your mail, and who you’re talking to and what communications you’re having. It’s an outrage,” Gillibrand said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

A federal judge in Texas ruled earlier this month that the Food and Drug Administration had improperly approved mifepristone, one of two abortion pills green-lighted for use in the U.S. more than two decades ago. 

The Biden administration appealed the ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which allowed the pill to remain available with some restrictions on access. The Supreme Court briefly paused the Texas ruling in order to give it time to review the administration’s request for an emergency stay.

Gillibrand said on Sunday the Supreme Court has appeared to have an “all-out assault on women’s reproductive freedom” that started with the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade.

“What we are seeing in these Republican legislatures as well as these very conservative courts is a continuation of that assault,” she said.

The New York senator said Democrats will “continue to appeal this kind of decision” and fight at the state level to codify Roe and the right to abortion, citing concerns about the erosion of the right to privacy.

“When you take away 50 percent of America’s right to privacy, say women don’t have it during the reproductive years, it is such an overstretch and an outrageous statement,” Gillibrand said.

She stressed worries about “what this means for a conservative court where they believe they should impose their views of the world on their religious beliefs, their views on health care, on the FDA’s decision of 20 years ago of a drug that has been deemed very safe.”