US government appeals to block suspension of abortion pill

First modification: 04/11/2023 – 11:36

With RFI’s Washington correspondent, Guillaume Naudin.

It hasn’t been long. Following Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision late Friday night to suspend marketing authorization for mifepristone (RU 486) throughout the United States, the Justice Department filed an appeal in a New York court on Monday, April 10. Orleans.

It’s a further sign of his willingness to take on the pro-abortion camp, which knew what it was doing when it turned to this Texas federal judge. Not only has he been openly against abortion for a long time, but the appeals circuit that will review his decision is also dominated by ultra-conservatives.

“Safe and effective”

The “extraordinary and unprecedented ruling” by a Texas federal court should “be blocked pending substantive review” of the case, the administration of Democratic President Joe Biden wrote in its appeal.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) ruled in 2000 that mifepristone (RU 486) was “safe and effective” for terminating a pregnancy and approved its sale, according to the government. Since then, more than 5 million American women have used it, and when taken as directed, “serious side effects are extremely rare,” he argues. The court decided to deprive the patients “based on its own misassessment of the risks,” she writes.

Decision “based not on science”

“Mifepristone has been on the market for 23 years in the United States. It’s also been approved worldwide as a very effective and very safe drug for people who want to interrupt or terminate their pregnancies. So for us it’s another technique from lawmakers that don’t agree or want to remove abortion access altogether in the United States,” Ena Suseth Valladares, director of programs at California Latinas for Reproductive Justice, told RFI.

“This moment is very important, it is very critical, but we are going to continue fighting and we are going to continue to see what can be done, because it cannot be that a judge makes this type of decision based not on science, but simply on a technique more to take away people’s right to decide whether or not to have an abortion,” he continues.

Supreme Court

What the institution directed by Merrick Garland requests is the suspension of the execution of the sentence while it studies the appeal and the total reversal of the decision before noon on Thursday. Otherwise, the Department of Justice will refer the matter to the Supreme Court. In any case, the high court should take the case on its own.

In fact, another federal judge in the State of Washington, anticipating this decision, to which local officials have referred, prohibited the FDA from withdrawing its approval in the 17 States that originated the appeal. The two sentences are, therefore, perfectly contradictory and the Supreme Court will have to rule almost automatically. In addition, it is dominated by ultra-conservative anti-abortion, who already abolished this right at the federal level less than a year ago.

And with the AFP