Washington state’s first-in-the-nation stockpile of abortion drugs will serve as insurance against future lawsuits seeking to ban the procedure nationwide or a second presidential term for Republican Donald Trump, Governor Jay Inslee said. [In 2023], with a federal lawsuit seeking to restrict access to abortion medication nationwide, Inslee, a Democrat, ordered the state’s Department of Corrections to use its pharmacy license to purchase 30,000 doses of the abortion drug mifepristone.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case in [June 2024], keeping mifepristone on the market. But the ruling left the door open to further legal challenges, and abortion rights advocates warn that the medication remains at risk.
The doses are enough to supply the state’s abortion patients for an estimated three years. Washington has seen the number of out-of-state women traveling there for abortions increase since 2022, when numerous states – including nearby Idaho – implemented bans in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision.
