Abortion rights advocates gather in front of the J Marvin Jones Federal Building and Courthouse in Amarillo, Texas, on March 15, 2023.
Moises Avila | AFP | Getty Images
A federal judge in Texas on Friday stayed the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, but delayed the ruling taking effect for a week, giving the Biden administration time to appeal.
Mifepristone was approved by the FDA more than 20 years ago. The much-awaited ruling comes nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion that had been in effect since the early 1970s.
U.S. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. Northern District of Texas held a key hearing in the case weeks ago in Amarillo, but the news of the decision that would upend access to the key abortion drug came down late on a Friday when many Americans were off for religious observances.
He endorsed nearly all of the plaintiffs’ arguments about their right to sue, which called for the removal of the FDA’s approval of the drug, and suggested that he believes the drug has serious safety issues notwithstanding the evidence the defendants offered to the contrary.
“The Court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly,” Kacsmaryk wrote. “But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions.”
In a dramatic turn, a federal judge in Washington state issued a preliminary injunction minutes after the Texas decision was announced that said essentially the opposite.
Judge Thomas Owen Rice of the U.S. District for the Eastern District of Washington barred the FDA from “altering the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of mifepristone” in the 18 attorneys general who sued to make sure mifepristone remains on the market in those states.
The Food and Drug Administration, abortion pill maker Danco Laboratories and the…
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