A federal judge in the United States on Friday (April 7) halted the approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. The 67-page ruling by US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas allows the Joe Biden administration one week to appeal the decision, according to court documents.
Kacsmaryk’s ruling is a preliminary injunction that would essentially ban the sale of mifepristone while the case before him continues, according to a report by the news agency Reuters. The judge, appointed to the bench by former president Donald Trump, did not rule on the merits of the challenge. The injunction will remain in place until the judge makes a final judgment or it is reversed on appeal.
Some abortion providers said that if mifepristone is unavailable, they would switch to a regimen using only misoprostol for a medication abortion, Reuters reported.
Four anti-abortion groups headed by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion doctors sued the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November last year, contending the agency used improper process when it approved mifepristone back in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug’s safety when used by girls under the age of 18 to terminate a pregnancy.
Mifepristone is part of the regimen in the US for medication abortions, which accounts for over half of all abortions in the country.
Responding to the lawsuit, the Biden administration said the drug’s approval was well supported by science, and that the challenge comes much too late.
Planned Parenthood, which is one of the largest pro-abortion groups in the US, slammed Friday’s court ruling.
“The judge’s decision in Texas today blocking the (Food and Drug Administration’s) approval of mifepristone is an outrage and exposes the weaponisation of our judicial system to further restrict abortion nationwide,” the federation’s President Alexis McGill Johnson said in a statement.
Johnson said that people should 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 over 20 years.
“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.
(With inputs from agencies)
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