There have been two very important decisions rendered recently.
The first by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District Court of Texas. He issued a ruling blocking approval of the dangerous abortion pill, Mifepristone (RU486), but giving the Biden Administration seven days to appeal the ruling, which of course, they have done to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The case was brought to the Texas Federal District Court by doctors of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, represented by lawyers from Alliance Defending Freedom. The doctors point to evidence that the FDA illegally approved dangerous chemical abortion drugs, and imposed a reckless mail-order abortion regime. They argue that the agency approved the drugs in 2000 without studying their safety under the labeled conditions of use, ignored evidence that the drugs cause more complications than surgical abortions and ignored their potential physical impacts on adolescent girls, according to LifeNews.
Judge Kacsmaryk agreed. Among the many problems that were discovered in the court proceedings, the Judge noted, “over twenty years ago, the United States Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) approved chemical abortion (“2000 Approval”). The legality of the 2000 Approval is now before this Court. Why did it take two decades for judicial review in federal court? After all, Plaintiffs’ petitions challenging the 2000 Approval date back to the year 2002, right? Simply put, FDA stonewalled judicial review — until now. Before Plaintiffs filed this case, FDA ignored their petitions for over sixteen years, even though the law requires an agency response within “180 days of receipt of the petition.” (pg. 1)
He also stated that, “the Court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly. 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. There is also evidence indicating FDA faced significant political pressure to forego its proposed safety precautions to better advance the political objective of increased “access” to chemical abortion — which was the “whole idea of mifepristone.” (pg. 57)
However, a separate ruling by Judge Thomas Rice of Washington’s Eastern Federal District Court, requested by Democratic attorneys general, prevented the FDA from altering the law as it stands, continuing the availability of Mifepristone. This ruling, while it applies to only 17 states, is in direct challenge to the Texas ruling.
Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, commented on these cases saying, “The FDA should be in the business of ensuring safety, not in taking lives.”
“Pro-lifers hailed the [Texas] decision for “shining a light on something that the Biden Administration wants to sweep under the rug – that these drugs do not treat or cure disease but kill unborn children and expose their mothers to dangerous side effects,” said Tobias. “The abortion industry has pushed for lowering protections for women undergoing a chemical abortion, while it peddles lies about the ease of the method.”
Now, with the Biden Administration appeal in the 5th Circuit court, and the two opposing rulings, it is almost certain that this issue will be resolved by the United States Supreme Court, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.
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For more information on this story, go to https://www.nationalrighttolifenews.org/2023/04/judge-kacsmaryk-harshly-criticizes-fda-for-its-handling-of-chemical-abortions-issues-preliminary-ruling-invalidating-fda-approval/