“This is just total bull****,” Connecticut’s Attorney General William Tong declared in reaction to a ruling by far-right-leaning Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District in Texas.
Tong was just one of the many public officials and advocates for women’s reproductive rights who reacted intensely to Kacsmaryk’s ruling that reversed the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the drug Mifeprex, a brand name for mifepristone. Mifeprex and mifepristone generics are used for chemical abortions.
It’s estimated that more than half of the abortions in the U.S. are done using drugs rather than surgically. Pro-life forces have long considered ending the availability of abortion drugs to be on a par with overturning Roe v. Wade.
Kacsmaryk had been appointed to his lifetime position on the court by Donald Trump. He had been a lawyer for the conservative Christian organization the First Liberty Institute and was a member of the conservative Federalist Society. While Kacsmaryk on April 7 reversed the FDA approval, he also suspended his ruling for seven days to allow the federal government time to appeal. The Department of Justice quickly filed an appeal with the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Texas. Connecticut’s Tong joined with the attorneys general of Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and the District of Columbia in filing a court brief supporting the government’s appeal.
The case had been brought by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and is known as AHM v. FDA. The FDA had approved Mifeprex in 2000. Numerous studies have confirmed its safety and effectiveness and statistics show it is safer than commonly used drugs such as Tylenol, penicillin and Viagra.
Within an hour of Kacsmaryk’s decision being released, a federal judge in Washington state ruled in a different case that the FDA could not make any changes in the availability of mifepristone and must simplify its restrictions governing the use of the drug.
“Here in Connecticut, abortion is safe, legal and accessible,” Tong told a news conference in Hartford. “It is the law of the state of Connecticut today, tomorrow and as long as we’re in this fight that mifepristone and medication abortion in Connecticut is legal, safe effective and available.”
U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal called on CVS, Costco, Walgreens, Walmart and others not to be bullied into denying their customers access to all legal drugs. The attorneys general of some Republican-controlled states have written to national retailers threatening legal action if they continued selling certain medications that they claim are made illegal by their states’ anti-abortion laws..
“This ruling is yet another devastating attack on reproductive rights,” Gov. Ned Lamont said of Kacsmaryk’s decision. “This is about controlling medical decisions that should be between patients and their doctors. We will not let this decision derail our fight to defend and strengthen abortion rights. In Connecticut, we remain committed to expanding access to reproductive healthcare.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said, “It”™s no surprise that a Republican judge handpicked by a conservative group to hear this case ruled to advance an anti-choice agenda that is deeply unpopular with the American people. We cannot allow right-wing judges to ignore the science, and put the health, safety, and autonomy of millions of women at risk.”
New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul announced that the state will stockpile a five-year supply of the mifepristone brand Misoprostol, which amounts to a total of 150,000 doses of the medication.
“One judge in Amarillo, Texas thinks he knows better than thousands of doctors and scientists and experts,” Hochul said during a Planned Parenthood event. “This isn’t just an attack on abortion, it’s an attack on democracy. Courts have never before revoked a science-backed decision made by the FDA.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said, “Senate Democrats are relentlessly working to protect a women’s right to choose from this extreme MAGA Republican agenda. We are committed to passing the Women’s Health Protection Act to enshrine the right to choose into law, ensuring mifepristone remains available in pharmacies, protecting health data around abortion and much more.”
New York State Sen. Shelley Mayer anticipated that the mifepristone case would wind up before the Supreme Court.
“The United States Supreme Court must defer to the authority of the FDA and overturn this decision with due haste,” Mayer said. “If this decision stands, it will have enormous implications not only for people seeking medication abortion and providers, but also on the standard of practice of policy making in the future. This is an inappropriate exercise of federal judicial authority and is an unjust and unfounded decision that undermines the rigorous and scientifically driven processes continuously undertaken by the FDA.”
U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York expressed concern that because mifepristone also is used to treat women who have suffered miscarriages, banning it from use would have severe health consequences for those women.
She and seven other U.S. senators wrote to New York City-based Danco Laboratories, which manufactures Mifeprex and asked that the company seek separate FDA approval for the drug to be labeled for use in treating miscarriages. Danco joined with the federal government in the appeal of Kacsmaryk’s decision.
“Health care providers need to be able to prescribe the best course of treatment for their patients without fear of prosecution,” Gillibrand said.“Mifepristone is shown to be a safe and effective way to treat the hundreds of thousands American women who suffer miscarriages every year, and highly restrictive laws should not impede its use. I urge Danco Laboratories to quickly seek approval from the FDA to add miscarriage management to the mifepristone label.”
