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“A U.S. judge in Texas on Friday suspended the two-decade-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone while a legal challenge proceeds… The case was brought by four anti-abortion groups headed by the recently formed Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and four anti-abortion doctors who sued the FDA in November. They contend the agency used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug's safety when used by girls under age 18 to terminate a pregnancy.” Reuters
Many on both sides are skeptical of the legal reasoning behind the decision:
“Judge Kacsmaryk’s reasoning, if it can be called that, appears more rooted in ideology than in law… [The opinion] seizes on dubious studies by antiabortion activists to declare that the FDA has ignored the safety risks of what they claim is a manifestly unsafe medication. Really, the opposite is true. The FDA regulates mifepristone with a special framework of restrictions reserved for only 60 drugs in the country, and through multiple reviews it has determined that the pill is, indeed, very safe to use — with complications occurring in fewer than 1 percent of cases…
“Supporters of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe v. Wade claimed the ruling merely put the abortion question in the hands of individual states. So much for that. Judge Kacsmaryk’s decision marks the first time a court has dictated a drug be removed from the market over the FDA’s objection. If it stands, women won’t be able to choose to have medication abortions, and states won’t have the right to let them.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“[Kacsmaryk’s] legal mistake is overstepping his authority as a judge to conduct his own review of the abortion drug’s risks and benefits. Congress has delegated such technical questions to regulatory agencies. It’s not the role of judges to redo an agency analysis…
“But Democrats don’t seem bothered when liberal judges do this to invalidate environmental reviews on fossil-fuel projects. And they cheered when federal Judge Thomas Rice, an Obama appointee, on Friday disagreed with the FDA’s safety restrictions on mifepristone… Abortion policy should be set by the people and their representatives, not by judges. If higher courts overrule Judge Kacsmaryk on appeal, this will likely be the reason. And let’s see if the legal eagles on the left give them due credit for intellectual consistency.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Other opinions below.
“Forcing mifepristone off the market is a short-term win. But if left unaccompanied by broader policy changes, it could lengthen the odds of creating a legal and cultural climate in which abortion is both less accessible and less sought-after…
“Abortion-rights ballot amendments won a clean sweep last year, and advocates are looking to press their advantage in key states such as Ohio. Relying on wins in court battles like the mifepristone case may instill a false sense of confidence, or worse, encourage a search for judicial shortcuts, rather than a clear-eyed recognition of the enormity of the task ahead…
“Activists who fought for half a century to overturn Roe know a thing or two about long-shot battles. If they’re serious about preserving that unlikely victory, they’ll need to shift the bulk of their time and attention away from courtroom battles and toward the court of public opinion and arena of meaningful public-policy supports.”
Patrick T. Brown, The Atlantic
“NBC recently ran an analysis on how abortion changes election maps, concluding that abortion is ‘handing the suburbs to the Democrats.’ The recent Wisconsin state supreme court election provides all the proof you should require. In 2020, Joe Biden won the state narrowly, but he only carried 14 of the state’s counties (including the most populous ones which is what carried the Democrats over the finish line). But Protasiewicz, the liberal supreme court justice candidate carried 27 counties, nearly double the number that Biden managed…
“This isn’t a discussion over whether abortion should be legal or when it should be banned. This is a simple matter of electoral reality. The Democrats have been devastatingly effective in making every electoral race into a referendum on abortion. And it’s been working for them. When conservatives start giving up seats (and the white house) based on that one issue, they end up losing on all of the other issues as well. Democrats will control the country’s policies on everything from border security to taxes and pediatric transgender treatments.”
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air
“The idea that a single judge in a conservative state could potentially change the health care options of millions of Americans sets up an extraordinary constitutional situation. It also flies in the face of the reasoning advanced by the conservative majority Supreme Court and anti-abortion rights advocates – that the procedure’s availability should be determined by legislatures in individual states…
“Kacsmaryk’s ruling also threatens to create problems for the approval of future drugs or to open the way to legal challenges for existing drugs. And it is another sign of a prominent conservative figure substituting his own lack of scientific expertise for that of doctors and the rigor of clinical trials. Since its approval in the US in 2000, there have been 5 deaths associated with mifepristone for every 1 million people who used it, according to the FDA. The risk of death from the use of penicillin is four times greater.”
Stephen Collinson, CNN
“Kacsmaryk cites a study that posits ‘fourteen percent of women and girls reported having received insufficient information’ about the side effects of having an abortion. The study also says that ‘eighty-three percent of women report that chemical abortion ‘changed’ them—and seventy-seven percent of those women reported a negative change.’…
“That study analyzed anonymous posts on an anti-abortion website called ‘Abortion Changes You,’ which runs a blog with stories from people who regret having abortions. The sample size is 98 blog posts, but the study authors only analyzed 54 posts and then just cherry-picked quotes from the rest… ‘This is roughly like reporting a statistic that ‘83% of people are fans of Judge Kacsmaryk’ without mentioning that the entire sample consisted of posters on JudgeKacsmarykFanClub.com.’…
“An abortion is a deeply personal choice, and it does not come without an emotional toll. There still seems to be a social taboo about discussing abortions and miscarriages, and people who experience them are often left without a network to support them. But it should still be a choice.”
Tori Otten, New Republic
