A federal judge in Texas on Friday reversed the two-decade-old approval of a safe and effective abortion pill, the latest volley in a conservative battle against reproductive rights in the United States.
If it stands, a decision made by a Donald Trump appointee will revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of a medication that is frequently used to end unplanned pregnancies.
Yet, a court in Washington state immediately after ruling in a different case that access to the medicine must be kept in more than a dozen states serves as evidence of how deeply the abortion debate has splintered US society.
The case will almost certainly end up before the Supreme Court due to the conflicting legal perspectives and the US Department of Justice’s prompt promise to appeal the Texas verdict.
The conservative-dominated panel last year overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had enshrined a woman’s right to abortion for half a century.
Reaction to the Texas ruling was swift.
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‘My administration will fight this ruling,’ President Joe Biden said.
‘The court… has substituted its judgment for FDA, the expert agency that approves drugs. If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks.’
The president of the powerful American Medical Association, Jack Resneck, said that allowing judges to interfere in ‘extensive, evidence-based, scientific review of … well-established FDA processes is reckless and dangerous.’
Planned Parenthood, one of the largest pro-abortion groups in the United States, said the ruling by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — a former conservative activist aligned with the religious right — was an assault on science.
‘We should all be enraged that one judge can unilaterally reject medical evidence and overrule the FDA’s approval of a medication that has been safely and effectively used for more than two decades,’ said the group’s president Alexis McGill Johnson.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said his department would appeal the judgment.
‘The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the decision… and will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal,’ he said.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling came after a coalition of anti-abortion groups sued to freeze the national distribution of mifepristone.
While he stayed the FDA’s 23-year-old approval, he also halted ‘applicability of this opinion and order for seven days’ to allow time for appeals.
Anti-abortion groups hailed the move.
‘Today’s decision out of Texas is a win for the health and safety of women and girls,’ said Katie Glenn of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America.
‘The ruling reaffirms that pregnancy is not an illness and abortion is not health care. Finally the FDA is being held accountable for the egregious violation of its own rules.’
The case landed in his court via what critics call “judge-shopping,” in which plaintiffs take legal action in a district where the judge has a history of rulings that support their case.
Federal judges in the United States have a right to issue rulings that carry national legal force.