‘The FDA failed in its responsibility to protect Americans when it approved chemical abortion drugs,’ attorney says
Democrats and Republicans are squaring off in dueling legal efforts in opposition and defense of the widely used abortion pill.
Dozens of attorneys general from both red and blue states are taking sides in a battle that will ultimately determine the fate and availability of the widely used abortion pill.
Blue states are suing the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from the position that it is too strict in limiting access to mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortion.
In the meantime, red states are suing the FDA from the position that it never had the authority to allow the drug to be made available online and shipped through the mail, and are seeking to have it removed from the U.S. market entirely.
On its own behalf, the FDA has asked the court to dismiss the lawsuits.
The Republican Argument
The Republican complaint (pdf) was filed on Nov. 18, 2022, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas Amarillo Division by Julie Marie Blake on behalf of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF).
The complaint takes the abortion pill story back to its beginnings when, on the second day of his presidency in January 1993, Bill Clinton “directed his cabinet to legalize chemical abortion drugs in the United States.”
The complaint alleges that Clinton and the FDA “then pressured” the manufacturer of mifepristone “to donate for free the U.S. patent rights of the drug to the Population Council,” described as “an entity focused on population control.”
After receiving the patent rights, the Population Council submitted a new drug application, coordinated closely with Clinton’s FDA, and obtained approval on Sept. 28, 2000.
“The only way the FDA could have approved chemical abortion drugs was to use its accelerated drug approval authority, necessitating the FDA to call pregnancy an ‘illness’ and argue that these dangerous drugs provide a ‘meaningful therapeutic benefit’ over existing treatments,” the complaint argues.
