Questions Surround Goverment Funded Abstinence Program (from ABC News)

WASHINGTON — Today, instead of addressing the massive premium increases about to hit families nationwide due to expiring Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, the Senate majority is pushing for new federal restrictions on abortion coverage in private insurance plans, to decimate access to gender affirming care, and to erect additional hurdles to health care for immigrants. The bill has been offered as an alternative to renewing tax credits to make health insurance affordable for more than 22 million people. In addition to not adequately addressing the looming health care affordability crisis, it would prohibit millions of people who get health insurance through the ACA from paying for private plans that include abortion coverage, which will dissuade private insurance coverage of abortion and push abortion care out of reach for people across the country, including in states where it is legal. The bill would also prohibit people on exchange plans, Medicaid, and CHIP from accessing gender-affirming medical care and add complicated hurdles for immigrants to access Medicaid coverage, including penalizing states that use their own money to cover health care costs for those who are excluded from Medicaid. Under these provisions, millions of eligible people could have essential care denied or delayed, including those who are part of mixed status families or citizens who simply fear being exposed to overzealous immigration enforcement. In response to the Senate’s upcoming vote on S.3386, American Civil Liberties Union National Director of Policy & Government Affairs Mike Zamore released the following statement: “Today, instead of acting to prevent massive health premiums hikes in three weeks, the Senate majority is working to make the health crisis even worse for families across the country by stripping the coverage of life-saving care in order to pursue their ideological agenda. Instead of lowering costs, the bill would prevent people from accessing abortion through ACA health care coverage, block access to medically necessary gender affirming care, and punish states for trying to extend coverage to their uninsured residents. “A serious solution is still needed to address expiring ACA tax credits without sacrificing people’s access to essential health care services. The Trump administration and the congressional majority must stop playing political games with the health care of the American people before millions see their premiums skyrocket and their quality of care drastically decline.”

WASHINGTON — Today, the states of Florida and Texas filed a new lawsuit in federal court in Texas seeking to end all nationwide access to mifepristone, a safe and effective medication used in two-thirds of U.S. abortions and as part of a gold-standard regimen for miscarriage care. The new lawsuit, Florida v. FDA, seeks to undo every FDA policy decision on mifepristone going back to the medication’s original approval 25 years ago. Florida v. FDA is one of three pending federal lawsuits attacking mifepristone. The other two, Missouri v. FDA and Louisiana v. FDA, seek to severely restrict medication abortion access nationwide by, among other things, banning the use of telemedicine and pharmacies for mifepristone — forcing every patient to travel to pick up their prescription in person at a health center, which may be hundreds of miles away. Recent data show that, by June 2025, more than 1 in 4 U.S. abortions were provided via telemedicine using mifepristone. “These lawsuits have nothing to do with the safety of this medication and everything to do with making it harder for people to get an abortion,” said Julia Kaye, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project. “Politicians in Texas and Florida are asking for a nationwide ban on a safe and effective medication that millions of Americans have used since the FDA first approved it 25 years ago. Anyone who believes that our access to essential medicines should be based on science, not political ideology, should be disgusted by these legal attacks.” Mifepristone’s excellent safety record has been confirmed by more than a hundred peer-reviewed studies and leading medical authorities like the American Medical Association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. Florida and Texas’s new lawsuit comes as the Trump administration appears to be gearing up to make it even harder for people to access the medication nationwide. Earlier this year, the Trump administration announced that the FDA is conducting a new review of its mifepristone regulations prompted by a report from a Project 2025 sponsor that purposefully distorts the safety record of medication abortion. This paper is a six-page, non-peer-reviewed document that has been denounced by more than 260 expert researchers for its lack of transparency and gravely flawed methodology. Nevertheless, in a letter to anti-abortion state attorneys general on Sept. 19, 2025, Secretary Kennedy doubled down on the publication’s importance, citing this propaganda as a “recent stud[y] raising concerns about the safety of mifepristone as currently administered.” Secretary Kennedy also stated that the FDA’s “policy changes will ultimately go through the White House, through President Trump.” Polling consistently shows that American voters support access to abortion, including medication abortion via mail and telemedicine. At the same time, voters worry that access to abortion remains under threat: a June 2025 poll by Navigator Research showed that nearly seven in ten voters believe abortion will be harder to access in the next five years.

WASHINGTON — The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit yesterday to compel the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to disclose records related to the agency’s review of its regulations on mifepristone, a medication used in most U.S. abortions. The lawsuit seeks to enforce the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, filed in August, which seeks information about the scope of the review along with any communications between the FDA and anti-abortion organizations, state and federal officials, and politicians requesting greater restrictions on medication abortion. The FDA has yet to respond to the ACLU’s FOIA request or to similar requests filed by other organizations, leaving the public in the dark about steps the agency appears to be taking towards making medication abortion harder to access. “The people of this country deserve to know whether the Food and Drug Administration is following the science on medication abortion or simply following the whims of anti-abortion ,” said Rachel Reeves, staff attorney with the Reproductive Freedom Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. “We demand transparency from the Trump administration and its anti-abortion allies, because this threat to our reproductive freedom cannot continue in secrecy.” Alarming statements from Trump administration officials, including FDA Commissioner Marty Makary, have indicated that the review centers upon a deeply flawed paper, written by a Project 2025 cosponsor, that purposefully distorts the excellent safety record of medication abortion. This paper — which is not peer reviewed and is only six pages long — has been denounced by more than 260 expert researchers for its lack of transparency and gravely flawed methodology. Anti-abortion politicians are nevertheless using this paper to push for medically unnecessary restrictions, including limits on telemedicine for abortion. Today, 1 in 4 U.S. abortion patients use to safely have a medication abortion after consulting with a health care provider access to abortion will be further out of reach for patients across the nation. The FOIA request and complaint are just the latest in the ACLU’s efforts to protect and expand access to medication abortion. For instance, even as the Trump administration lays the groundwork to make mifepristone harder to access, a federal district court ruled in October in the ACLU’s longstanding case Purcell v. Kennedy that the FDA has failed to justify its current heavy restrictions on mifepristone, which already go far beyond what FDA imposes on the vast majority of medications. That recent decision prohibits the FDA from ignoring the wealth of peer-reviewed evidence on mifepristone’s safety and how the FDA’s restrictions burden patient access in conducting its new review.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit to compel the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to disclose records related to the agency’s review of its regulations on mifepristone, a medication used in most U.S. abortions. The lawsuit seeks to enforce the ACLU’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, filed in August 2025, which seeks information about the scope of the review along with any communications between the FDA and anti-abortion organizations, state and federal officials, and politicians requesting greater restrictions on medication abortion.