New Jersey governor to stockpile abortion pills after congressional power shift

New Jersey will build a reserve of the abortion-inducing drug mifepristone, Gov. Phil Murphy said during his State of the State address on Tuesday. The plan came in response to the Republican Party winning majorities in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, Murphy said. Mifepristone terminates early pregnancies by blocking the mother’s production of the hormone progesterone, causing the uterine lining to thin and making the uterus uninhabitable for the embryo.

New Jersey needs to continue to enhance its reputation as a safe haven for abortion, he said. The governor also called on lawmakers to pass a measure cutting all out-of-pocket costs tied to abortions. Murphy did not expound on how much the government planned to spend on the mifepristone supply, but the state’s 2025 budget does earmark over $50 million for reproductive health program funding.

Can states just do this? Several states began hoarding abortion drugs in 2023 when federal and state courts began considering limits on the drug’s availability. California bought about 2 million doses of misoprostol that year and dispensed the entire store. However, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s spokesman Brandon Richards told local media that the state was ready to purchase up to 1.75 million more doses in the future.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul purchased a five-year supply of the abortion drug misoprostol in 2023. Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey also purchased about 15,000 mifepristone doses through the University of Massachusetts Amherst the same year.

Early last year, then-Washington Gov. Jay Inslee confirmed that the state maintained a three-year stock of mifepristone. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek also amassed a three-year mifepristone supply for state use in 2023. That collection has since been restocked and will now last through 2028, according to a November release from her office.

Dig deeper: Read Leah Savas’ report for more background on the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling to keep mifepristone publicly available.