U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk on Friday ruled in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration to protect the health and safety of women and girls by halting the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of chemical abortion drugs.
“By illegally approving dangerous chemical abortion drugs, the FDA put women and girls in harm’s way, and it’s high time the agency is held accountable for its reckless actions. Pregnancy is not an illness, and chemical abortion drugs don’t provide a therapeutic benefit—they can pose serious and life-threatening complications to the mother, in addition to ending a baby’s life. The FDA never had the authority to approve these hazardous drugs and remove important safeguards. This is a significant victory for the doctors and medical associations we represent and more importantly, the health and safety of women and girls,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erik Baptist.
The court ordered that its stay will not go into effect for seven days to allow the Biden administration time to seek review from appellate courts.
“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…,’” the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, wrote in its decision. “Plaintiffs have credibly alleged past and future harm resulting from the removal of restrictions for chemical abortion drugs.”
According to Baptist, the FDA chose politics over science when it pushed for the legalization of the chemical abortion drugs mifepristone and misoprostol in 2000. For example, the FDA was able to approve the drugs only by characterizing pregnancy as an “illness” and arguing that they provide a “meaningful therapeutic benefit.” As the medical groups and doctors filing suit explain, by approving chemical abortion drugs, the FDA failed to abide by its legal obligations to protect the health, safety, and welfare of girls and women.
The lawsuit notes that the FDA never studied the safety of the drugs under the labeled conditions of use, ignored the potential impacts of the hormone-blocking regimen on the developing bodies of adolescent girls, and disregarded the substantial evidence that chemical abortion drugs cause more complications than surgical abortions.
The FDA also removed the few safeguards that were in place. In 2016, for example, the FDA extended the permissible gestational age of the baby for which a girl or woman may take chemical abortion drugs—from seven weeks’ gestation to 10 weeks’ gestation—increasing the mother’s risk of adverse complications.
The FDA also changed the dosage and route of administration for the drugs, reduced the number of required in-person office visits from three to one, expanded who could prescribe and administer chemical abortion drugs beyond medical doctors, and eliminated the requirement for abortionists to report non-fatal complications from chemical abortion drugs.
Further, in 2021, the FDA announced that it would allow abortionists to send chemical abortion drugs through the mail—in direct violation of longstanding federal law. As the lawsuit points out, this decision puts girls and women at additional risk from chemical abortion drugs since mail-order, at-home abortions skip necessary medical examinations to ensure that girls and women do not have conditions that could lead to fatal outcomes.
Naturally, Democrats demanded that, rather than follow the law and appeal, Biden should simply ignore the order of a federal court.
"I believe that the Biden administration should ignore this ruling," Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York declared on CNN. She said "deeply partisan" judges have "engaged in unprecedented and dramatic erosion of the legitimacy of the courts," calling the abortion pill ruling "unfounded."
"The interesting thing when it comes to a ruling is that it relies on enforcement," she elaborated. "And it is up to the Biden administration to enforce, to choose whether or not to enforce a ruling."
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon issued a similar statement after the ruling came down.
"There is no way this decision has a basis in law. It is instead rooted in conservatives' dangerous and undemocratic takeover of our country's institutions," Wyden said. "No matter what happens in seven days, I believe the Food and Drug Administration has the authority to ignore this ruling, which is why I'm again calling on President Biden and the FDA to do just that."
ADF attorneys representing the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, and doctors Shaun Jester, Regina Frost-Clark, Tyler Johnson, and George Delgado filed suit against the FDA in November 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division.
abortion pill
morning after pill
abortion policy
Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration
federal courts
chemical abortion drugs
Alliance Defending Freedom
mifepristone
misoprostol
pregnancy as illness
medical examinations
Biden abortion policy
Food and Drug Administration
U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division