The president of the United States announced that he will “fight” against the decision of a federal judge to suspend the abortion pill in the country, a measure that he considered “an unprecedented attempt to deny basic freedoms to women.”
“My administration will fight this decision,” Joe Biden said in a statement released by the White House.
The Department of Justice has already announced that it will appeal the decision of Texas federal judge Matthew Kacsmaryk to suspend the marketing of mifepristone, one of the two pills used for abortion, which in practice prevents prescription.
However, Kacsmaryk, a former Trump administration appointee, has given federal authorities a week to appeal the decision.
The abortion pill has been widely used in the United States since 2000, and there is no precedent for a single judge to overturn medical decisions by the Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Mifepristone is one of two drugs used for medical abortion in the US, along with misoprostol. About 500,000 women use, on average per year, this abortion pill.
However, the US Department of Justice had announced on Friday that it will appeal the decision.
The government “strongly disagrees with this decision,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement. “The government will appeal and, in the meantime, will seek a stay,” he added.
Garland denounced the decision, which affects the entire country, including states that protect abortion rights, as “contrary to the FDA’s conclusion … that mifepristone is safe and effective.”
Once the government’s appeal is filed, the decision will be reviewed on an emergency basis by an appeals court in New Orleans, also known to be conservative. Therefore, the case must be brought quickly to the Supreme Court of the United States.
In June, the Supreme Court, heavily revised by former US President Donald Trump, handed abortion opponents a historic victory by removing the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy, thus giving each state the freedom to legislate on the matter. Since then, some 15 states have banned abortion on their territory.
In Friday’s decision, the Texas judge upheld most of the arguments in the complaint filed in November by a coalition of doctors and anti-abortion organizations against the FDA.
Like them, he cited studies on the risks attributed to the abortion pill, although these are considered insignificant by most of the scientific community. He also accused the FDA of not following procedures to fulfill a political objective.
The main US family planning organization also denounced the “deeply damaging” suspension on Friday.
“The Texas judge’s decision to block FDA approval of mifepristone is outrageous and reveals the instrumentalization of our court system to further restrict abortion nationwide,” the Planned Parenthood president said in a statement. , Alexis McGill Johnson.
Source: TSF
