Washington state government in the US has announced it has bought a large stockpile of abortion pills in anticipation of a Texas judge’s ruling that could ban access to medical abortion nationwide.

Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee last month asked the state Department of Corrections, which has the necessary license, to buy 30,000 doses of mifepristone, estimated to last three years. The pills arrived in Washington on March 31.

At the same time, Inslee said that the University of Washington bought an additional 10,000 doses of pills, enough for another year.

The governor pointed out that Washington is the first state to take this measure, which he called a “backup policy” in case mifepristone pills are no longer available in the country.

Inslee’s office announced that about 800 abortions a month, or 60 percent of the abortions in the state, are medication-assisted. State officials estimate that demand for the abortion pill will increase due to restrictions imposed in other states after the US Supreme Court in June 2022 overturned its historic ruling that protected women’s right to abortion.

Meanwhile, Judge Matthew Kaczmarek in Amarillo, Texas, is hearing a lawsuit filed by a group of anti-abortion groups seeking to revoke the FDA’s 22-year-old approval of mifepristone. If this happens, medical abortions using this preparation will not be available anywhere in the country.

Mifepristone was approved in 2000 for use in combination with another drug, misoprostol, to induce abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy. It is also used in cases of miscarriages and for other gynecological diseases.

“The lawsuit in Texas poses a clear and present risk to patients and healthcare providers across the country. “Washington will not sit idly by and risk the devastating consequences of inaction,” Inslee said in a statement. “We are not afraid to take action to protect our rights. “Washington is a state that supports women’s right to choose, and no judge from Texas is going to force us to do any different,” he added.

“The provision of medical care should be decided by the patient and their doctor, not by a judge in Texas,” he tweeted.

Across the U.S., at least half of abortions are done with pills rather than surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Mifepristone is used in the majority of medical abortions in the US, the same source said.

Abortion providers across the country are preparing to switch to another protocol for medication abortions, which will be based on using only misoprostol. This protocol is not FDA approved, but is widely used around the world.