Connecticut will stockpile mifepristone, known as the abortion pill, to facilitate access to the drug in the wake of threats to curb its availability.
One of two emergency-certified bills passed by the state legislature this week includes $800,000 in funding to Planned Parenthood of Southern New England. Use of the funding is up to the discretion of the organization, but vice president Gretchen Raffa confirmed that part of it will go towards stockpiling mifepristone, a drug used to end pregnancies.
“We know that there are threats that are coming from the federal administration and Congress, and we need to do everything we can to ensure that people will continue to have access to medication abortion and comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care,” Raffa said.
Raffa said the organization doesn’t yet have an “exact figure” for how much of the money it will spend on mifepristone.
The announcement comes after efforts to build up a supply of the drug in Connecticut appeared stalled last month.
At the time, Rep. Jillian Gilchrest, D-West Hartford, who serves as co-chair of the Human Services Committee and has been spearheading the effort to stockpile mifepristone, said that Gov. Ned Lamont had rejected multiple proposals to secure access to the drug because of cost concerns.
Since then, Gilchrest said, the legislature’s Reproductive Rights Caucus appealed to Democratic legislative leadership, and constituents got in touch with lawmakers to express support for the measure.
“Folks in the community reached out to their legislators, to the Speaker of the House, to let them know that getting mifepristone here into the state under this current Trump administration was vitally important,” she said.
A spokesperson for Lamont did not respond to a request for comment.
Mifepristone is taken along with another drug, misoprostol, to end a pregnancy. The combined treatment is known as the “abortion pill” or medication abortion. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration first approved mifepristone in 2000.
Data from a 2023 study found that medication abortion is used in well over half of abortions in the United States, with the numbers increasing since 2020. In 2021, there were 9,562 abortions performed in Connecticut. Of those, nearly 64% were medication abortion using mifepristone.
In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years, and leaving the issue in the hands of the states.
Several states, including Massachusetts, began stockpiling the drug after a federal court ruling in Texas blocked the FDA’s approval of mifepristone in April 2023. Last June, the Supreme Court dismissed that case based on legal standing, preserving access for now.
New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced last month that the state would join others to protect access to the drug ahead of President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Efforts to stockpile mifepristone seek to guard against a plan outlined in Project 2025, the conservative governing plan developed by the Heritage Foundation with assistance from many officials connected to Trump’s first term. The plan makes calls to invoke the 150-year-old federal Comstock Act in order to prosecute providers who send mifepristone by mail. Project 2025 also proposes revoking FDA approval of the drug.
In October, attorneys general of Missouri, Idaho and Kansas filed a lawsuit against the FDA seeking to reverse regulatory changes that have expanded access to the drug, marking a second attempt to curb access to mifepristone after the Supreme Court threw out a similar case earlier last year.
In January, at Lamont’s recommendation, the Appropriations and Human Services Committees approved an additional $500,000 in federal funding for Planned Parenthood of Southern New England, under what’s known as the Social Services Block Grant, to help support the increased demand for services. Those funds will go towards annual exams, cancer screenings, birth control and other family planning services.
However, because the block grant funding comes from the federal government, it cannot go towards abortion-related services, including stockpiling mifepristone.
The emergency measure passed by the Connecticut legislature this week provides $2.8 million in grants to organizations that are being impacted by Trump administration policies, including Planned Parenthood, as well as refugee resettlement agencies and other nonprofits struggling with federal funding freezes or threatened losses. Planned Parenthood’s $800,000 in funding makes the organization the biggest nonprofit beneficiary of the legislation.
Republicans in both chambers raised concerns about a lack of transparency in how the organizations were selected, and they said the funding choices ignored more immediate needs like homelessness.
“Anytime you have funding being done through an emergency certified process, there isn't public input, there isn't transparency, and there looks to be a level of arbitrariness to it,” House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora of North Branford said in an interview.
House Republicans proposed an amendment that would have required any organization receiving an earmark of $50,000 or more to report back to the state how it had used the funds. Senate Republicans proposed a measure that would instead put the funding towards elderly nutrition and heating assistance for low-income households. Both failed to pass.
This article first appeared on CT Mirror and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
