Access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the US on Friday plunged into uncertainty following conflicting court rulings over the legality of the abortion medication mifepristone that has been widely available for more than 20 years.
The drug the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved in 2000 appeared to remain at least immediately available in the wake of two separate rulings that were issued in quick succession by federal judges in Texas and Washington.
US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former US president Donald Trump, ordered a hold on federal approval of mifepristone in a decision that overruled decades of scientific approval.
Photo: Reuters
That decision came at nearly the same time that US District Judge Thomas O. Rice, an appointee of former US president Barack Obama, essentially ordered the opposite and directed US authorities not to make any changes that would restrict access to the drug in at least 17 states where Democrats sued in an effort to protect availability.
The extraordinary timing of the competing orders revealed the high stakes surrounding the drug nearly a year after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and curtailed access to abortion across the country.
US President Joe Biden said his administration would fight the Texas ruling.
The whiplash of the conflicting decisions is likely to put the issue on an accelerated path to the Supreme Court.
“FDA is under one order that says you can do nothing and another that says in seven days I’m going to require you to vacate the approval of mifepristone,” Harvard Law School professor Glenn Cohen said.
Abortion providers slammed the Texas ruling, including Whole Woman’s Health, which operates six clinics in five states and said it would continue to dispense mifepristone in person and by mail over the next week as they review the rulings.
The abortion drug has been widely used in the US since securing FDA approval, and there is essentially no precedent for a lone judge overruling the medical decisions of the FDA. Mifepristone is one of two drugs used for medication abortion in the US, along with misoprostol, which is also used to treat other medical conditions.
Kacsmaryk signed an injunction directing the FDA to stay mifepristone’s approval while a lawsuit challenging the safety and approval of the drug continues. His 67-page order gave the government seven days to appeal.
“The court in this case has substituted its judgement for FDA, the expert agency that approves drugs,” Biden said. “If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks.”
Clinics and doctors that prescribe the two-drug combination have said that if mifepristone were pulled from the market, they would switch to using only the second drug, misoprostol. That single-drug approach has a slightly lower rate of effectiveness in ending pregnancies, but it is widely used in countries where mifepristone is illegal or unavailable.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
NONCOMMITTAL: South Korea’s president said the world could only wait for China and Japan to resolve matters amicably through dialogue to secure regional peace Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi yesterday called on South Korean President Lee Jae-myung to help “ensure regional stability,” as Beijing pressures Tokyo over its stance on Taiwan. The two leaders met in Takaichi’s picturesque home region of Nara in western Japan, days after Lee visited Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing. They agreed to strengthen cooperation on economic security, regional and global issues, as well as artificial intelligence, South Korea’s presidential office said. Looming in the background of the meeting was Japan’s heated diplomatic spat with China, triggered by Takaichi’s suggestion in November that Tokyo could intervene militarily if China attacks Taiwan. China
RSS