California’s Democratic lawmakers have spent the past year enacting legislation to protect abortion rights in the wake of Roe v. Wade’s reversal, but a ruling today by a Texas federal judge is one thing they can’t touch.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk suspended the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s two-decades’-old approval of mifepristone, arguing that it was flawed and invalid. Kacsmaryk issued a temporary stay on his ruling for seven days to allow the Biden Justice Department to appeal, which it quickly did. The ruling is likely to pull the drug from pharmacy shelves unless a higher court intervenes while the case moves through the appeal process.
But soon after the ruling in Texas, a district judge in Washington state issued a conflicting ruling in a separate case, prohibiting the FDA from taking the drug off the market in 17 Democratic-led states (not including California). Despite the confusion caused by these dueling decisions, legal experts say even the threat of a legal gray area is likely to cause providers to stop distributing the drug.
Mifepristone is the first of a two-drug regimen that makes up the majority of abortions in the U.S., according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy center. It blocks the pregnancy hormone progesterone and is also used to manage miscarriages.
Why this is uncharted territory
While the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision last June rescinded federal abortion protections, it left intact states’ ability to set their own abortion laws. California legislators and Gov. Gavin Newsom jumped at the chance to make the state a beacon for progressive…
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