Politics & Government
Rep. Jacobs Calls Texas Judge's Order To Ban Abortion Pill ‘Misogynistic Attack'
The judge's ruling is likely to be appealed immediately to the conservative New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
April 7, 2023
Rep. Sara Jacobs slammed a Texas judge’s order Friday suspending the FDA’s two-decades-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone as a “misogynistic attack” on American women.
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U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who was appointed by Donald Trump and is the sole federal judge in remote Amarillo, granted a request by anti-abortion groups to ban sales of mifepristone nationwide.
“As a 34-year-old woman, I can’t take this anymore — another massive, misogynistic attack on my health care by a man who doesn’t know a damn thing about my body,” said the Democrat who represents the 51st District in central San Diego County.
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“This has nothing to do with patient care — mifepristone is safer than Tylenol and has been approved by the FDA for two decades,” she said. “But yet again, radical Republicans are intervening where they don’t belong in personal and private health care decisions.”
By choosing to sue in Amarillo, the plaintiffs ensured that the case would go before Kacsmaryk, a conservative former Christian activist. The suit was filed by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, which was incorporated in Amarillo just three months earlier.
The judge’s ruling is likely to be appealed immediately to the conservative New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with the U.S. Supreme Court as a next step after that.
And in a competing opinion late Friday, a federal judge in Washington state ruled in a separate case involving mifepristone that the drug is safe and effective. U.S. District Judge Thomas Rice ordered the FDA to preserve “the status quo” and retain access to the drug.
Legal experts said the conflicting orders will likely result in a quicker review by the high court.
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