A federal judge in Texas ordered the Food and Drug Administration to suspend its approval of a pill involved in roughly half of abortions nationwide. The decision would likely reduce the availability of abortions in states where the procedure is legal if not for an additional ruling Friday night ordering the opposite.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk sided with anti-abortion groups on Friday. He ruled that the FDA’s decades-old approval of mifepristone, the first of two abortion-inducing drugs used to terminate a pregnancy through 10 weeks, should be suspended. The decision gave the Biden administration a week to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and will not go into effect until then.
A TEXAS JUDGE COULD REMOVE A KEY ABORTION DRUG FROM THE MARKET
Soon after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, a federal judge in Washington state issued a ruling directly contradicting it. The Washington ruling ordered the FDA to make no changes to the availability of the drug.
The conflicting rulings create a situation that is likely to be brought before the Supreme Court, according to the New York Times.
Several anti-abortion medical associations, including the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, as well as four doctors, had argued that the FDA went beyond its regulatory authority in approving mifepristone back in 2000.
The lawsuit followed the Supreme Court’s decision last June to overturn Roe v. Wade, which opened the door for red states to enact sharp abortion restrictions.
In his 67-page ruling, Kacsmaryk, appointed by former President Donald Trump, said the FDA had failed to evaluate the psychological or long-term medical consequences of the pill, which the agency had deemed safe and effective.
He also criticized the lack of testing for “under-18 girls undergoing reproductive development” and suggested the agency had bowed to political pressure to approve the drug.
“The Court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly,” Kacsmaryk said. “But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions.”
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The FDA has repeatedly said the abortion medication is a safe and effective alternative to surgical abortions. The American Medical Association, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and other medical associations argued in a court filing that reversing mifepristone’s approval would “cause profound and irreparable harm to patients across the country.”
It’s unclear the scope of the effects of taking mifepristone off the market, though abortion rights groups had previously warned it could force abortion clinics to switch to surgical abortions only, which could inundate many facilities.
