- Published
- April 07, 2023
Amarillo, TX — Today, the U.S. Court in the Northern District of Texas issued a stay of the FDA’s approval of the chemical abortion drug mifepristone, meaning the drug would not be available for elective abortions throughout the nation. However, the stay is delayed for seven days, giving the Biden/Harris Administration time to appeal the ruling to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the closely watched case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. F.D.A., Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a 67-page opinion that found that the F.D.A. violated federal law in several ways when it approved mifepristone for elective abortion in 2000. Most of his concerns were related to the drug’s safety and how abortion providers use it, writing, “[O]ne thing is clear: the lack of restrictions resulted in many deaths and many more severe or life threatening adverse reactions. Due to FDA’s lax reporting requirements, the exact number is not ascertainable.” (See p. 57.)
Furthermore, Judge Kacsmaryk found that mailing abortion drugs violates the 150-year-old federal Comstock Act that prohibits the mailing of “[e]very article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing” that produces “abortion.” (While that law could not be enforced after the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the Court overturned Roe in 2022, allowing the Comstock Act to go back into effect.)
Meanwhile, shortly after the ruling in the Texas court, a federal judge in Washington State ordered the F.D.A. to continue to make mifepristone available, at least in the 17 states and the District of Columbia that filed the lawsuit. That case is Washington v. F.D.A.
Texas Alliance for Life’s executive director, Joe Pojman, Ph.D., had these comments:
We applaud the action of the federal court in Amarillo to reverse a two-decades-old decision by the F.D.A. to improperly approve a chemical abortion drug that puts women’s health and lives at risk. We hope that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals will uphold that decision.
Regardless of the outcome of the federal litigation, we remain grateful that the Human Life Protection Act will continue to protect unborn children and mothers from all methods of elective abortion, including chemical abortions. Passed by the Legislature in 2021, that law went into effect shortly after the Supreme Court overturned Roe last year. Furthermore, in 2021 the Legislature also passed strong legislation to make trafficking abortion drugs into our state a felony offense.
Texas provides vast resources for women with unplanned and planned pregnancies through hundreds of publicly and privately funded non-profit organizations and church-based ministries to help them successfully carry their unborn children to term and keep or place the babies for adoption, with services continuing three years after birth.
