Pretends to suspend FDA approval of safe and effective abortion drug on bogus claims by bigoted quacks that it is unsafe. Another judge, in WA, ordered the FDA not to pull mifepristone, and DoJ appealed the TX decision immediately. Various states are stockpiling thousands of doses, enough for a year. Numerous other legal actions are following.
All aboard.
The opinion (PDF) in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration
The pun cries out to be heard, cries out I say. How about Alliance for Hypocritical Quackery?
Federal judge orders abortion pill off U.S. market but immediate appeal expected
That appeal was filed a few hours later.
Judge Matthew Joseph Kacsmaryk, from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, issued a nationwide ruling in the case before his court, though his ruling will not take effect until at least a week from Friday.
A federal judge in Washington state released a separate opinion telling the FDA it cannot alter “the status quo and rights as it relates to the availability of Mifepristone” in the 16 states that filed a lawsuit in that court.
Judge Thomas Rice, from the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, ordered the FDA not to substantially change access to mifepristone in Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Analysis
I don’t have room here to go through the opinion line by line pointing out logical and legal fallacies. Suffice it to say that they are pervasive, most notably in the form of medical quackery from Evangelicals, taken at face value by the judge, who simultaneously rejected all actual medical data from the FDA and friends of the court.
The Judge is a judicial activist of the worst sort, the kind that Wrong-Wingers would be screaming the roof off about, except that “judicial activism” turns out to be merely a long-standing Dog Whistle for “decisions that we scream about”.
As always,
Whatever Wrong-Wingers scream about, do more of.
See also earlier plaintiffs American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians & Gynecologists (“AAPLOG”)
and Christian Medical & Dental Associations, which sought to block FDA approval of mifepristone in 2002. In 2006 Congressional mysogynists claimed
Mifepristone was “associated with the deaths of at least 8 women, 9 life-threatening incidents, 232 hospitalizations, 116 blood transfusions, and 88 cases of infection, [plus] “more than 950 adverse event cases” associated with mifepristone “out of only
575,000 prescriptions, at most.”
The subsequent Staff Report concluded that FDA’s approval and monitoring of mifepristone was “substandard and necessitates the withdrawal of this dangerous
and fatal product before more women suffer the known and anticipated consequences or fatalities.”
Bo-o-o-o-ogus! “Associated with”—what wonderful weasel words! Not “caused” or anything like it. Those statistical lies also don’t point out how many of those adverse outcomes were caused by complications of the pregnancies, not the medication.
That is an excellent safety record being spun into a Dog Whistle to Evangelical haters. It invites comparison with Viagra, which has in fact been done. Mifepristone is much safer.
Palmer Report: For the second day in a row, Republican extremists have picked the wrong fight – and they’re going to lose
On Thursday, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas outlawed the abortion pill nationwide.
These Republican extremists have picked the wrong fight.
All they have left is judicial terrorism and state legislature terrorism
So if extremist Republicans and their extremist judges really want to keep digging themselves a deeper hole like this, that’s their call.
We'll Dig Our Way Out (Simpsons Clip)
All it’ll do is keep motivating a larger and larger majority of Americans to make it their life’s mission to vote these thugs out of power. These Republicans keep wanting to see what they can get away with. They’re about to find out that answer the hard way.
Links
Kacsmaryk’s legal reasoning is as irresponsible as his rhetoric.
He cites, as supposedly objective sources, studies conducted by antiabortion activists.
I could keep going, but you get the point: This is a judge who knows what conclusion he wants to reach and is going to do what he must to get there — facts, fairness and law be damned.
Party members call on Biden to do more to protect reproductive rights amid conflicting judicial rulings on mifepristone
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