United States President, Joe Biden, has declared that his administration will fight the ruling against the suspension of an abortion pill by a federal judge in Texas.
Biden made the vow via a series of tweets on his verified Twitter account on Saturday, April 8.
The President stated: “Today, a federal district judge in Texas ruled that a prescription medication available for over 22 years, approved by the FDA, and used safely by millions of women should no longer be approved in the U.S.
“Here’s why this matters. And how my administration is going to fight it.
“The medication in question is used for medication abortion.
“It doesn’t just affect women in Texas. If it stands, it’d prevent women across the country from accessing the medication.
“It’s the next step toward an abortion ban that Republican elected officials vowed to make law.
“What’s more – the court in this case has substituted its judgment for FDA, the expert agency that approves drugs.
“That means if this ruling were to stand, there would be virtually no prescription approved by the FDA safe from this kind of attack.
“We’re going to fight it.
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“The Attorney General has announced Justice Department will file an appeal and seek an immediate stay of the decision.
“And Congress must restore the protections of Roe v. Wade. Vice President Kamala Harris and I are committed to protecting a woman’s right to an abortion. Period,” President Biden said.
A federal judge in Texas, on Friday, April 7, overturned 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, the ruling by a Donald Trump appointee would reverse permission granted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a drug widely used to terminate unwanted pregnancies.
The FDA and the Justice Department both filed appeals against the decision on Friday, with President Biden pledging to “fight this ruling”.
In an illustration of how deep the fracture on abortion runs in US society, a judge in Washington state moments later ruled in a separate case that access to the drug must be preserved in more than a dozen states.
The dueling legal opinions, along with the appeals, means the issue is almost certain to end up before the Supreme Court.
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.
The president of the powerful American Medical Association, Jack Resneck, said 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.
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“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,” the group’s president, Alexis McGill Johnson, 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.
“The ruling reaffirms that pregnancy is not an illness and abortion is not health care. Finally the FDA is being held accountable for its egregious violation of its own rules,” Katie Glenn of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America said.
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.
Opinion polls show a majority of Americans favor access to abortion.
But the issue is an explosive one for those on the right, especially evangelical Christians.
A number of Republican-dominated states have begun trying to restrict access to abortion, and have launched legal attempts to overturn what many believed was settled law.
The Supreme Court ruling last year was seen as a major victory for the movement.
But it has proved unpopular with the electorate.
Some observers said the Republican failure to capture the Senate in last year’s midterm elections, along with their lackluster showing in the House, was at least partially the result of their support for the issue.
More than half of all abortions in the United States are performed with medication.
Mifepristone is one component of a two-drug regimen that can be used in the United States through the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.
It has a long safety record, and the FDA estimates 5.6 million Americans have used it to terminate pregnancies since it was approved.
