US President Joe Biden on Friday called a federal judge’s
decision to suspend approval of an abortion pill as an “unprecedented step in
taking away basic freedoms from women.”
“My administration will fight this ruling,” Biden said in a
statement issued by the White House.
The ruling, if it were to stand, makes every regulated drug
vulnerable to “these kinds of political, ideological attacks,” Biden said.
Recall that a federal judge in Texas overturned the
two-decade-old approval of a safe and effective abortion pill on Friday, 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 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 Joe Biden pledging to “fight
this ruling”.
“The lawsuit, and this ruling, is another unprecedented step
in taking away basic freedoms from women and putting their health at risk,” he
said in a statement.
But, 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 duelling 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.
Biden called it an ideological attack on women’s rights and
freedoms.
“The court… has substituted its judgment for FDA, the expert
agency that approves drugs,” he said. “If this ruling were to stand, then there
will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from
these kinds of political, ideological attacks.”
The president of the powerful American Medical Association,
Jack Resneck, said that 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.
“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,” said the
group’s president Alexis McGill Johnson.
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 the “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,” said Katie Glenn of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life
America.
“The ruling reaffirms that pregnancy is not an illness and
abortion is not health care. Finally, the FDA is being held accountable for the
egregious violation of its rules.”
AFP
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