That ruling by U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, who was nominated by President Donald Trump and is known to have antiabortion views, was based on a “misguided assessment of the drug’s safety,” the Justice Department argued. Kacsmaryk’s ruling, the Justice Department said, “upended decades of reliance by blocking FDA’s approval of mifepristone and depriving patients of access to this safe and effective treatment.”
The federal government and the drug’s manufacturer have asked the right-leaning U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to say by Thursday at noon whether it will put the lower court’s ruling on pause, allowing the pill to temporarily stay on the market while the legal proceedings continue.
But any delay in blocking access to the pill would “perpetuate substantial harm on the public,” the antiabortion group, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, argued in the filing Tuesday shortly before a midnight deadline. The group has argued that the FDA acted unlawfully in approving the medication, alleging that the agency has “put politics above women’s health, demonstrating callous disregard for women’s well-being, unborn life, and statutory limits.”
President Biden said that if the ruling blocking access to the pill is allowed to stand, “there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks.”
Medication-induced abortions typically use the pill, mifepristone, in concert with a second medication, misoprostol. The former induces an abortion and the latter prompts contractions that expel the embryo or fetus. In the wake of the Texas court’s ruling, abortion providers have scrambled to evaluate whether they should perform abortions using only misoprostol, which is used elsewhere in the world to perform medication abortions but is considered to be less effective than using the two pills together. It can also cause more cramping and bleeding.
A representative for the Justice Department was not immediately available to comment.
Perry Stein, Rachel Roubein, Ann E. Marimow and Caroline Kitchener contributed reporting.
