Texas federal judge halts FDA approval of abortion pill mifepristone

On Friday, April 7, a federal judge in the US suspended the approval of the abortion drug mifepristone. According to court records, the Joe Biden administration has one week to challenge the verdict set down in the 67-page judgment by US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas.

According to a report by the news agency Reuters, Kacsmaryk’s decision is a provisional injunction that would practically prohibit the sale of mifepristone while the case before him is still in progress. The previous president Donald Trump’s appointee to the bench, the judge, did not reach a conclusion regarding the viability of the challenge. Until a final decision is reached by the judge or it is overturned on appeal, the injunction will stay in effect.

Over half of all abortions in the US are performed using mifepristone

According to Reuters, some abortion clinics said that they would convert to a protocol employing just misoprostol for a medical abortion if mifepristone became unavailable.

In a lawsuit filed against the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November of last year, four anti-abortion organizations led by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion physicians alleged that the FDA had approved mifepristone improperly back in 2000 and had failed to adequately consider the drug’s safety when used by girls under the age of 18 to end a pregnancy.

Over half of all abortions in the US are performed using the medicine, which includes the drug mifepristone in the treatment plan.

The Biden administration argued that the drug’s approval was solidly backed by research and that the case was filed far too late to have any real impact. Vice President Kamala Harris said the ruling undermines the FDA’s “ability to approve safe and effective medications… based on science, not politics.”

This decision could threaten the FDA’s role in this country’s public health system

According to AFP, the US Justice Department announced on Friday that it would contest Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s judgment and added that it did not agree with it at all.

“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the decision… and will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

One of the biggest pro-abortion organizations in the US, Planned Parenthood, also decried Friday’s court decision.

“The judge’s decision in Texas today blocking the (Food and Drug Administration’s) approval of mifepristone is an outrage and exposes the weaponization of our judicial system to further restrict abortion nationwide,” the federation’s President Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement.

The FDA’s clearance of a drug that has been used safely and effectively for more than 20 years can be overturned by a single judge, according to Johnson, and people should be outraged by this.

“This decision could threaten the FDA’s role in this country’s public health system, and — if allowed to stand — will have broad and unprecedented consequences that reach far beyond abortion,” Johnson added.