An anti-abortion-rights group urged a federal appeals court not to halt implementation of a Texas court order that would block access nationwide to a key drug used in medication abortion, saying the US Food and Drug Administration was correctly judged to have “repeatedly put politics above women’s health” for decades.
(Bloomberg) — An anti-abortion-rights group urged a federal appeals court not to halt implementation of a Texas court order that would block access nationwide to a key drug used in medication abortion, saying the US Food and Drug Administration was correctly judged to have “repeatedly put politics above women’s health” for decades.
The Biden administration and Danco Laboratories LLC, the maker of Mifeprex, the brand version of abortion pill mifepristone, are seeking an emergency pause in the litigation “that would perpetuate FDA’s unlawful mail order abortion regime and result in further harms from a dangerous drug the district court found should never have been approved,” the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine said in a court filing late Tuesday.
US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo on Friday temporarily reversed the FDA’s decades-old approval of mifepristone, siding with those who say the government failed to take into account health concerns about the drug and that its green light was politically motivated. His ruling is set to go into effect on Friday.
Lawyers for the government had argued in a Monday filing that the “extraordinary and unprecedented” ruling upends the status quo and that the group behind the lawsuit had no authority to challenge federal approval of the drug because the doctors it represents don’t prescribe it to their patients.
Read More: US Seeks Hold on Texas Abortion Pill Ruling, Clarity on Conflict
The case is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. US Food and Drug Administration, 2:22-cv-00223, US District Court, Northern District of Texas (Amarillo). The appellate case is Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. US Food and Drug Administration, 23-10362, 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals.
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