Friday afternoon, a U.S. district court judge in Texas issued a long-awaited ruling in the case Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The judge decided in favor of the plaintiff, agreeing that the FDA’s approval of the chemical abortion drug regimen was politicized and bypassed safety concerns in the rush to put abortion drugs on the U.S. market. The judge gave the federal government one week to file an appeal before the ruling would go into effect, revoking FDA approval of the chemical abortion regimen and removing it from the market.
Immediately after the ruling, President Joe Biden issued a statement saying, “My Administration will fight this ruling. The Department of Justice has already filed an appeal and will seek an immediate stay of the decision. But let’s be clear — the only way to stop those who are committed to taking away women’s rights and freedoms in every state is to elect a Congress who will pass a law restoring Roe versus Wade.”
“No surprise that the Biden administration has announced it will appeal a federal court ruling out of Texas that puts the health and safety of women over the FDA’s now politicized policymaking,” Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “Chemical abortion drugs are extremely dangerous — resulting in deaths and severe adverse events filed by physicians and patients over the last two decades.”
Perkins added, “The Clinton White House, throughout the approval process, made it clear to FDA staff that this was a drug application that would not be denied. Finally, after all these years, the illegal approval of these hazardous drugs is being addressed.”
While the decision in the highly anticipated Texas abortion drug case drew the most media attention over the weekend, a second ruling from a federal judge out of Washington State is also significant to the fate of chemical abortion drugs in the United States. The Washington judge placed an opposite order on the FDA, requiring that no changes be made to the status of the chemical abortion regimen’s approval.
The conflicting rulings make it likely that the question of chemical abortion drug approval under the FDA will escalate to the Supreme Court — a result that would serve as a dramatic reminder of the court’s recent role in redefining the abortion industry’s power in America after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in 2022.
According to Mary Szoch, FRC’s director of the Center for Human Dignity, Americans must focus on the facts of the case. “The mission of the FDA is to protect public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs,” she explained. “It is not to approve drugs in pursuit of a political agenda that kills innocent children and destroys the very foundation of American society — the family. Chemical abortion drugs take the lives of unborn Americans, often putting their mothers’ lives in danger as part of the ‘process.’ Even The New York Times’s own report defending these drugs acknowledges that at least 1 in 33 women who take these drugs, and as many as 1 in 20, end up needing surgical intervention following their use.”
She concluded, “What is regularly overlooked, though, is the devastation these drugs cause to the mother who makes a decision to take the drugs out of fear and is then confronted with the reality that what the abortion industry told her was a clump of cells is, in fact, her recognizable unborn baby — delivered dead into the toilet.”
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Joy Stockbauer is a correspondent for The Washington Stand.