OAN Roy Francis
UPDATED 11:01 AM – Saturday, April 8, 2023
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has called on the Biden administration to ignore United States District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s injunction against the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill.
On Friday, Trump-appointed judge Kacsmaryk sided with anti-abortion activists, and suspended approval of the abortion pill Mifepristone.
The case against the FDA was brought to court by the Christian conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF). The group argued that the FDA had exceeded its authority when it approved mifepristone over twenty years ago, in 2000.
The plaintiffs originally wanted the judge to completely withdraw approval of the chemical abortion drug and to remove it from the list of approved drugs.
However, in the preliminary injunction, Kacsmaryk simply ordered the FDA to pause the drug’s approval while the lawsuit challenging the safety of the drug proceeds.
“Simply put, FDA stonewalled judicial review – until now,” the judge said in his 67-page ruling.
The ruling was met with backlash and attacks from Democrat senators and political figures.
The ruling also gives the federal government seven days to appeal the decision. In a series of Tweets, President Joe Biden stated that his administration disagrees with the ruling, and will seek to fight the Texas decision.
“The medication in question is used for medication abortion. If this ruling were to stand,” he said in a statement. “Then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks,”
Vice President Kamala Harris also released a statement in the defense of the abortion drug saying that it is “an unprecedented decision that threatens the rights of women nationwide.”
While appearing on CNN, Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also attacked the decision by Kacsmaryk, claiming that the judge is “deeply partisan” and that “there is no way this decision has a basis in law,” she also called on the Biden administration to “ignore this ruling.”
“I believe that the Biden administration should ignore this ruling,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “The interesting thing when it comes to a ruling is that it relies on enforcement. And it is up to the Biden administration to enforce, to choose whether or not to enforce a ruling.”
At the same time a conflicting ruling from a federal court in Washington state ordered the FDA to refrain from taking actions that would affect the drug’s availability to the public.
In January, the FDA had given permission to certified retail pharmacies to dispense the drug. Doctors and pharmacies that are currently prescribing, and dispensing mifepristone have to acquire a certification to do so.
According to the NBC News and the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that advocates for abortion access, “Access to the two-drug regimen is currently legal in some form in 36 states: Medication abortion is legal in 22 states and restricted in the remaining 15.”
The two conflicting decisions have increased the chances of the Supreme Court being involved, and having to rule on the fate of the drug itself.
This also comes almost a year after the Supreme Court had overturned the Roe v. Wade decision, leaving the matter of abortion to be decided by individual states.
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