A lawsuit challenging the Food and Drug Administration approval of mifepristone is without merit, and a Texas judge should reject a request for a court order revoking that approval, the Biden administration has argued in a filing, The Hill reported.
Mifepristone, a drug that blocks hormones necessary for pregnancy, was approved by the FDA in 2000 to induce an abortion up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy.
The FDA said that granting the request from anti-abortion groups to cancel its approval would be “unprecedented,” stating that "the public interest would be dramatically harmed by effectively withdrawing from the marketplace a safe and effective drug that has lawfully been on the market for 22 years.”
Mifepristone has been used by more than 3 million people in the United States since its FDA approval, and women have increasingly turned to abortion pills if they need to terminate a pregnancy since the Supreme Court in June overturned the abortion protections granted in Roe v. Wade, according to The Hill.
The Alliance Defending Freedom a conservative legal group that has helped write anti-abortion laws for states and defended Mississippi in the case that led the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, filed the lawsuit in November in Amarillo, Texas.
The lawsuit argues that the FDA fast-tracked the approval of mifepristone by using a process meant for treatments of life-threatening illnesses, with the ADF stating that the lawsuit “is the culmination of decadeslong efforts ... to hold the FDA accountable for its irresponsible actions.”
The lawsuit requests that the court immediately pause the FDA’s approval of the drug while the case continues, which would make all medication abortions illegal.
Attorneys for the Biden administration said that even though the plaintiffs face no injury, let alone any irreparable harm, "they ask this court for emergency relief in the form of a mandatory injunction that would immediately withdraw approval of a safe and effective drug that has been available in the United States for more than two decades."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.
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