Contradictory court orders put the abortion drug mifepristone in “uncharted territory.”
Federal judges in Texas and Washington handed down two opposing rulings on the abortion pill mifepristone on Friday, jeopardizing access to the drug and putting the US Food and Drug Administration in an impossible situation.
Matthew Kacsmaryk, a conservative federal district court judge in Texas, issued a long-awaited ruling Friday evening calling for the FDA to stay its approval of mifepristone, which has been deemed safe and legal for 23 years, while Thomas Rice, a federal court judge in Washington state, swiftly issued a directly contradictory decision.
Kacsmaryk’s order to halt mifepristone’s approval was widely expected given his conservative views and background in the Christian right, and hinges on the idea that medication abortion is not safe. That claim, though, is disputed by decades of evidence to the contrary, and in the Washington state order enjoining the FDA from making changes to mifepristone’s availability in the 17 states and Washington, DC, Rice also argued that it isn’t the role of a court to determine a drug’s safety.
As of now, medication abortion — most frequently a two-drug regimen consisting of mifepristone and misoprostol — remains legal in the US, and both drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, are approved by the FDA. Kacsmaryk’s order would have invalidated mifepristone’s approval after a seven-day stay of the order to allow for potential emergency relief. But Rice’s ruling further complicates Kacsmaryk’s, since the FDA would be unable to fully comply with both orders at once.
“There is now directly conflicting federal court decisions on what the status of mifepristone is,” Rachel Rebouché, dean of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law told Vox in an interview. “So nothing changes for the next week, and we’ll see litigation start to move as the FDA and DOJ ask the Fifth Circuit and Supreme Court to clarify.”
Not only does the Texas ruling endanger access to medication abortion, it also calls into question the ability of the FDA and other federal agencies to follow through with their mandates, according to several experts. Kacsmaryk’s ruling cites dubious claims about mifepristone’s supposed dangers, and experts told Vox that the fact that a court has now decided it can arbitrate scientific fact better than medical experts is unprecedented and potentially quite dangerous.
Contrary to Kacsmaryk’s order, mifepristone is extremely safe, and along with misoprostol is widely used to end abortions within the first trimester. As Vox’s Rachel Cohen explains:
Friday’s contradictory rulings are by no means the last word on medication abortion; both the Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, which manufactures mifepristone under the name Mifeprex, have filed appeals to the Fifth Circuit Court, and it’s likely the issue will end up before the Supreme Court.
