US Govt Appeals Abortion Pill Ban

The US Justice Department urged an appeals court on Monday to freeze a ruling by a federal judge in Texas that would ban a widely used abortion pill in a far-reaching case that looks likely to wind up at the Supreme Court.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former Republican president Donald Trump, on Friday overturned the Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, which is used for more than half the abortions carried out annually in the United States.

“The district court’s extraordinary and unprecedented order should be stayed pending appeal,” the Justice Department said in a court filing.

“If allowed to take effect, the court’s order would thwart FDA’s scientific judgment and severely harm women,” the filing said. “This harm would be felt throughout the country, given that mifepristone has lawful uses in every state.”

The Justice Department asked the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit to stay the district judge’s order pending a full appeal in the case.

The latest US standoff over women’s reproductive rights comes almost a year after the conservative-dominated Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that enshrined a woman’s right to abortion for half a century.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, pledged last week to fight the ruling that would ban mifepristone, calling it “an unprecedented step in taking away basic freedoms from women and putting their health at risk.”

“It is the next big step toward the national ban on abortion that Republican elected officials have vowed to make law in America,” Biden said.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre condemned the ruling on Monday as an “attack on FDA authority” and warned that it could “open the floodgates for other medications to be targeted and denied to people who need them.”

Shortly after the judge in Texas issued his decision, a judge in Washington state ruled in a separate case that access to mifepristone must be preserved.

District Judge Thomas Rice, a Barack Obama appointee, said mifepristone is “safe and legal” and the FDA must preserve access to it 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.

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.