As the legal battle continues over access to Mifepristone, commonly known as the abortion pill, National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest union of registered nurses, demands an end to what nurses say is “an all-out class war against health care for women.” On May 4, the Supreme Court restored nationwide access to mifepristone by mail, pausing until at least May 11 a lower-court ruling in Louisiana v. FDA that had restricted it.

In the following statement, continuing NNU’s ongoing fight for reproductive health care justice, nurses demand that national access to mifepristone and all abortion services be restored long term:

“As patient advocates, nurses have an obligation to resist unjust laws that put the health and safety of our patients in jeopardy. Mifepristone has been proven safe and effective by hundreds of studies over the past 20 years, and we will not stand by and let individual states or the Supreme Court ignore that science. We will not accept a world in which our patients have no bodily autonomy and nurses have to fear for our patients’ lives or for our own licenses and livelihoods because of the criminalization of scientifically proven, medically necessary care. As a union made up of predominantly women, we are both the patients and providers, and profoundly harmed by government interference in our personal medical decisions. Abortion is health care — period.

When Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, health care decisions that were once made between our patients and their health care providers were put into the hands of individual states like Louisiana, where elected officials (who are not medical clinicians) pushed through strict abortion bans. But nurses know that making lifesaving health care illegal does not lessen our patients’ need for that care. Because mifepristone was available to our patients through the mail, countless lives have been saved, including in states with restrictive abortion bans. 

We will not allow elected officials in states like Louisiana to now claim they have somehow been harmed by our patients finding ways to continue to make their own private health care decisions. Nurses demand that when the Supreme Court’s temporary stay ends on Monday, the court rule in the interest of saving lives across the United States. Mifepristone must remain accessible in the long term.

Further, nurses demand an end to the broader far-right project to advance an all-out class war on gender justice in health care. While we fight attacks on reproductive health care, we were appalled to see the Department of Justice recently issue more than 20 subpoenas to health care providers nationwide, demanding the private medical records of minor patients who have received gender affirming care. The medical evidence overwhelmingly supports the safety and efficacy of gender-affirming care, and elected officials with no medical background should not be making medical decisions.

Every person deserves to live in a healthy society, with Medicare for All and more. Nurses will continue fighting to demand elected officials focus on improving our patients’ lives and access to health care, not on investing in warfare abroad, and in culture wars here at home to advance their own political careers.”

National Nurses United is the largest and fastest-growing union and professional association of registered nurses in the United States with more than 225,000 members nationwide. NNU affiliates include California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, DC Nurses Association, Michigan Nurses Association, Minnesota Nurses Association, and New York State Nurses Association.