In another devastating blow for abortion access nationwide, a federal judge in Amarillo has suspended the approval of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug that has been on the market for more than 20 years. The Texas judge’s ruling said that the FDA’s approval of the abortion drug mifepristone was improper.
In response, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said on Sunday that U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling does not represent America.
“What you saw by that one judge in that one court in that one state — that’s not America,” Becerra said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The Biden administration has already filed an appeal to the Texas ruling, which came out the same day that a federal judge in Washington state ruled that the FDA had placed overly burdensome regulations on the abortion pill. The existence of contradictory rulings has led to questions about what, if anything, can be enforced in the near-term — a situation that is likely to wind up at the Supreme Court and in the meantime creates chaos in the healthcare industry and in the minds of people trying to come to grips with the ever-evolving restrictions.
Kacsmaryk wrote that the FDA succumbed to political pressure when it approved mifepristone more than 20 years ago and subsequently lifted restrictions on the medication over the ensuing two decades, arguing that “the lack of restrictions resulted in many deaths and many more severe or life-threatening adverse reactions.”
The case is momentous for multiple reasons, not only for its direct impact on abortion, but as Becerra warned, it could also affect other drugs that the FDA has approved or might still approve.
“First and foremost, when you turn upside down the entire FDA approval process, you’re not talking about just mifepristone,” he said. “You’re talking about every kind of drug. You’re talking about our vaccines, you’re talking about insulin, you’re talking about the new Alzheimer’s drugs that may come on.”
His wildly optimistic view of the country is that “America goes by the evidence. America does what’s fair. America does what is transparent and we can show that what we do is for the right reasons.”
Becerra’s claim that the ruling does not represent America leads me to believe that he is living in isolation. He stated, “If a judge decides to substitute his preference, his personal opinion for that of scientists and medical professionals, what drug isn’t subject to some kind of legal challenge?”
Does Becerra not realize that America has become precisely the place where facts are ignored, science is rejected and ridiculed and personal opinion—no matter how far out on the fringe—prevails? Has he not lived through the Covid pandemic and the anti-vax movement? Did he not watch a president of this nation encourage his top health officials to study the injection of bleach into the human body as a means of fighting Covid?
Oh the irony! Republicans fight tooth and nail for the right to life, first banning abortion and then abortion pills, only to loosen gun controls the day after children are killed by crazed gunmen in the classroom.
On March 27, a mass shooting occurred at the Covenant School in Nashville. Tennessee has one of the nation’s highest rates of gun deaths, including murders, suicides and accidental shootings. It also has some of the most permissive gun laws. Despite this, in 2021, it enacted a law that lets most Tennesseans 21 and older carry handguns without first clearing a background check, obtaining a permit, or getting trained on firearms safety. “Guns are essentially ubiquitous” in the state, a part of the culture, said Nashville Mayor John Cooper.
Soon after the Covenant School shooting, Florida’s Senate voted 27-13 to pass a bill that does away with Florida’s requirement under state law to obtain a concealed weapons permit and undergo background checks and firearms training in order to carry a concealed gun, making Florida the 26th state with a permitless concealed carry law.
Since the shooting at Sandy Hook and all the others that have followed it, no number of protests and no argument, no matter how valid and self-evident it may be, can get the GOP to do something about the ubiquity of guns in this country. Guns that kill children. Indeed, legislators who protest in favor of stronger controls are expelled from the House of Representatives.
Yet in the midst of an epidemic of gun violence that kills our most vulnerable at a frightening rate, even in the classroom, some states ban abortion, arguing that every life is sacred.
Mr. Becerra might do well to take note that this is the real America, where hypocrites fight to ensure that every baby is born, and then fail to protect them from raging gunmen who hunt them down like prey.
