The Arizona Supreme Court Obtained an Emergency Stay from the Proposed Proposed Action on Abortion in the State and the Public’s Best Interest: Dr. Rubin
The Arizona appeals court on Friday temporarily blocked the enforcement of the ban on abortions across the state, after a three-judge panel voted to grant an emergency stay, according to court documents.
The judge wrote that the courts have a responsibility to try to harmonize all of the state’s statutes.
The court concluded that the petition for stay needed to be granted because there was an acute need for healthcare providers, prosecutors and the public to know the application of criminal laws.
Brittni Thomason, a spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General’s Office, said in a statement following the ruling that “our office understands this is an emotional issue, and we will carefully review the court’s ruling before determining the next step.”
After a lawsuit was agreed in not enforce the old law until next year, abortions were resumed by the largest provider of abortions in the state.
The world of medicine is full of misinformation and doctors need to be able to speak up, according to Dr. Rubin, the editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine.
A hospital PR official said they were not involved in interviews at this time and that the doctor should send along questions and her proposed answers.
The doctor sent along the questions and answers and received a resounding “no” from the PR official: “We ask that you do not comment to the NY Times at this time.”
How doctors and universities have been forced to make abortion decisions in the aftermath of new abortion laws: The case of a young fetus
As many physicians do, I also have more than one job. My other office, where I work as a board-certified gynecologist, not a maternal-fetal specialist, is located in a clinic that offers abortion care to all kinds of patients. Their lives are never simple, either.
“If [they] don’t speak up, who is going to provide the evidence about the effect [abortion bans are] having on patients?” asked Dr. Erika Werner, who chairs the health policy and advocacy committee at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine and is the chair of obstetrics and gynecology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
Dr. Rosha McCoy, acting chief health care officer at the Association of American Medical Colleges, said medical centers and universities are having to deal with a great deal of “fear” and “confusion” in the aftermath of new abortion limitations.
“They don’t want themselves or the physicians to be put in a position where something is said that could be interpreted that’s going to cause a problem for both the clinician and/or the institution,” said McCoy, whose group represents more than 400 teaching hospitals and health care systems.
The fetus was too young to survive outside the womb, it was 19 weeks pregnant. Her water had broken, an ultrasound showing no amniotic fluid around the baby. In states where abortion is allowed, doctors would offer to terminate the pregnancy, since pregnant women in this situation have a high likelihood of developing an infection and becoming septic, which is a life-threatening emergency.
Since the passage of the Texas law, some women have been denied abortions even when they are in danger and the fetus has serious birth defects and will die within minutes of birth. Even after a fetus has died, some people have been denied abortions.
“Literally, we’ve had to watch patients deteriorate in front of our eyes,” said the doctor, a specialist in high-risk pregnancies who works at a public university.
A doctor whose wife and children live in different communities: “I have no hope of losing my job, but I’m afraid I won’t lose my job”
We were made to feel like criminals because of this. That’s exactly how it makes us feel – like we’re doing something wrong,” she said. I think that we’re all scared. I have a fear of losing my job. Losing my job would be a big deal to me because I am the primary breadwinner in my family.
The doctor told CNN that at this meeting, it was intimidating that “these very fancy, very high-level, high-powered administrators had watched a video [of the event] and obtained a transcript to make sure I in no way made a connection to my employer.”
“I got the strong sense they’ll say no,” they said. “They worry about state funding sources and what happens if it gets controversial, so unfortunately instead of supporting us, they want everyone to play nice and quiet and not stir up any trouble.”
But this battle comes at a high cost for all of us. Patients seeking abortion care and providers of that care should not be put in a position of power by their political allies.
According to a doctor who is acquainted with the situation, a university official told the residents to remove the photo from their social media accounts, despite the statements from respected national organizations. The doctor said that the official told the residents that they could post the picture on their own accounts if they didn’t identify where they work.
The doctor stated that the lawyers gave the residents a talk about the limits of free speech. CNN has seen a photo of a presentation.
While looking for another job, residents rely on senior colleagues to call them and they won’t get a job if they are seen as difficult, according to a doctor.
After the UT Southwestern Medical Center, CNN reveals that abortion doctors in Texas are talking about the Supreme Court opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court
In the past year, the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center issued more than 150 news releases detailing discoveries in the lab, studies done by its doctors, and awards for researchers.
When CNN reached out to one of the study’s authors last month, she said that she would be “happy to talk” but that all inquiries needed to go through the university’s media office.
CNN then received this response from the medical center’s director of public relations: “UT Southwestern continues to review the U.S. Supreme Court opinion in conjunction with Texas laws and will not be commenting at this time. The findings speak for themselves.”
Oncologists have expressed concern that abortion bans could hurt pregnant cancer patients. Pregnant women can’t receive certain cancer tests, and treatments that can harm a fetus, so if abortion is not an option, they sometimes have to delay lifesaving cancer care. Two breast cancer doctors wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine that abortion bans can make it difficult for pregnant women with breast cancer to get complete or safe treatment.
When CNN reached out to the cancer doctors at MD Anderson on September 9 to discuss what they have seen since Texas passed strict abortion bans last year, an unsigned response from the MD Anderson public relations office stated that the doctors were “not available for an interview.”
MD Anderson said in a statement that its providers talk about the published data on the implications of being pregnant and refer patients to maternal fetal medicine specialists.
On October 7, CNN pressed further to speak with the doctors, and an associate vice president said they were working on coordinating the interviews, but none was made available prior to the deadline for this story.
Wade is the chief public affairs officer at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, a membership organization that includes physicians who are experts in high-risk pregnancies. Wade was approached by a reporter from the New York Times Magazine who wanted to put a photographer in the high-risk maternal-fetal medicine department.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/12/health/abortion-doctors-talking/index.html
What New Laws Really Tell About Maternal-Fetal Medicine: The Case of the New York Times Invitation to Arbitrary Hospitals
I think people are not aware of the fact that laws are hurting real people, and that is when people don’t hear these stories. She said that people need to hear that.
She said the hospitals and practices that declined The New York Times invitation told her that their attorneys and public relations colleagues were nervous. “
“There is a part of me that understands that as these laws continue to change rapidly, [for hospitals] to interpret what can be done and can’t be done varies in some places day to day. So I can understand someone taking a very cautious approach – why they might see the world that way,” she said.
She and other Maternal-fetal medicine specialists got on a call with their hospital administrators, after the Supreme Court’s decision.
On the call, it was clear that the medical center would not be taking a particularly activist approach, which would make it difficult for doctors to describe the effect of the new laws to the public.
She said that people cried when they heard the extent to which the institution was going to be difficult.
The people who come to me for high risk patients are already facing something that they could not have planned for. I think about them constantly: The mother carrying twins, faced with aborting one fetus or risk losing both. A scared 21 year old with a life-threatening infection that developed two days after her water broke too early.
Law Enforcement and Abortion in Michigan: a Physicians Perspective from the Crossroads of Family Medicine and the Laws of First-Principles
Courts have stopped the enforcement of the 1931 law. The uncertainty surrounding the appeals and judicial wrangling has been distressing for abortion providers in Michigan.
It’s hard to practice medicine when you’re always bracing for the next legal crisis that could harm your patients. I talk to the hospital lawyers more frequently than any doctor because I am frustrated that patients can not get the same care in a different state.
Every time I am forced to turn a patient away, that burning candle inside me, once a roaring and passionate fire in a young student excited to embark upon a career of helping others, dims ever so slightly. This serious breach of my duty as a physician is not easily recovered from, even when I am powerless to do otherwise.
But most of all, I worry that the next lawyer I discuss a complex case with will not understand, and that the patient who needs an abortion will be denied. I worry they will lack the time, money, transportation, and support to get the care they need. They will forever be changed by this denial, it is not in line with their medical opinion or their wishes. I am scared they will die.
But I still experience joy in my job sometimes. The frightened hands of a college student were trembling, suddenly still after having taken their first pill of their abortion regimen, whispering, ” I am going to be ok.” The tears of a transplant recipient dry when she knows she won’t have to go back on the transplant list when her already tenuous kidney fails again during another pregnancy.
The enormous weight on the shoulders of a single mom lifts, now that she can focus on the family she has and the career she wants, free of the constraints of an unwanted pregnancy. I take some comfort from knowing that the shattered hearts of Tara and Justin – who desperately wanted the baby they had to say goodbye to – can finally start to heal now, knowing they did what was right for Tara’s health and spared their baby, who could not have lived, a short lifetime of pain.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/26/opinions/abortion-midterms-a-doctors-perspective-winchester/index.html
A Case Study in How Women Get Aid Access to Medical Services in a States with a Bargaining Constraint on the Human Rights and Freedoms
Patients should be allowed to simply be patients, to make medical decisions that align with their faith, family needs and their health, without interference from the government. They should be able to receive accessible, compassionate care regardless of what state they live in. They should be allowed to be doctors. I should be able to care for my patients even if they’re retaliated against.
This shift accompanies another one in how people get abortions. In states that have banned or restricted access, clinic-based procedures fell in July and August, according to other new research. As a result, women are carrying pregnancies they didn’t plan or want. The increase in women seeking pills, however, mostly offset the drop, The Times reported. Requests for pills to Aid Access are filled most of the time.
It is illegal in more than a dozen states right now, and it is banned in several of them. And unfortunately, just like people are forced to do now, it is likely that some people in states where abortion is banned may choose to travel to another state to seek medication abortion,” Miller said.
The night before her abortion, Melissa had to travel to another state. She did not reach her hotel until after 3 a.m. after driving overnight from Ohio to Michigan. She had arrived at the front desk just a few hours later.
NPR agreed to not to use full names for all the patients interviewed in this story because of the intimate medical information discussed concerning a highly politicized and controversial issue.
The Waiting Room: A Case Study in Michigan Against a 1931 Law Criminalizing Abortion in the Presence of Rape or Incest
The waiting room is designed to be welcoming. The tall pines are bending in the breeze and big windows are looking out. The TV is showing a show about women remodeling their farmhouses.
“‘You can never tell anyone, because no man will ever marry you if he knows that this has happened,’” Chelian recalled her father telling her afterward. ‘ You’re going to be okay. We’re going to help you out. We’ll never discuss it again after this conversation.
But abortion rights in Michigan are far from certain: court battles have been continuing for months over a 1931 state law that criminalized abortions, with no exceptions for rape or incest. After Roe v. Wade established a federal right to abortion, that law lay dormant for decades, but was still on the books. Earlier this year, both Planned Parenthood and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer filed lawsuits to prevent the law from going back into effect.
The court rulings on August 1 made abortion legal at breakfast and once again at dinner in Michigan.
A Hyummingbird’s Dream: Seeing a baby without seeing a future with a man who is not afraid to see a relationship
Northland’s founder Chelian, now 71, is like a hummingbird: a petite powerhouse who never stops moving. She has spent most of her adult life pouring that energy into creating the clinics she wished had existed when she was 15: spaces that are spotless but not soulless, where soothing music plays in the procedure rooms. The brown paper bag with the prescriptions inside is given to patients after their appointment, along with a small heart on the front of the bag.
But then the appointment took an unexpected turn. “She wanted to support me in any way she could,” she says. She gave me a book. It didn’t even seem like it was religion until the very end … They were posing to be so pro-choice, and they’re not.”
I slept with someone one time while going through a divorce, and I am in this weird situation. And then I had a baby. And they were like, ‘Are you sure that you don’t see a future with this guy? What if we brought him in here?’ They were trying to talk me into having a baby that I couldn’t have, and then they’re trying to talk me into a relationship. It’s crazy.”
Melissa Lance: Hope for Prop. 3 of the U.S. Supreme Court of Appeals over Abtreasures, and What she’s saying
The US Supreme court ruled in June that abortions must be limited to 15 weeks into a pregnant woman’s life, well before the previous rule of 24 weeks, which was imposed by the Legislature.
She says that because she has two kids, she feels better. “It shouldn’t be that hard.”
When it is Melissa’s name that is called, she is brought from the waiting area to the procedure room, where she meets the doctor that will perform her procedure: gynecologistAudrey Lance.
Like many of the patients who come here, Lance has kids, and the shared experiences of parenthood — Halloween costumes, soccer games, the agony and ecstasies of living with a toddler — provide most of the small talk before the procedure begins, or the abortion pills are dispensed.
Earlier this year, Lance was dyeing the tips of her short brown hair purple — it helps nervous young patients relax when she walks in and they see their abortion doctor is actually a woman with cool purple hair.
Every little moment of connection and ease is important, given how public, politicized and ugly the legal fights over abortion have become, Lance says. It has been a difficult couple of months since the decision was made.
“And it seems like every week, sometimes every day, there was a new thing happening that was affecting how we could work, or whether we could work and whether we could continue to provide care,” Lance says.
Despite the turmoil of recent months, she’s optimistic Prop. 3 will pass, and nullify forever any threat from that 1931 ban. “I am hopeful. But…” she pauses, then sighs. “I think you just have to be. I don’t know how I would be able to work if I weren’t.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic
Announcement of her pregnancy with a baby at a local abortion clinic: “It’s going to be a prisoner, ain’t it?”
In a day, the clinic in sterling heights sees as many as 24 patients. On the nine days a public radio reporter visited, about half of the patients agreed to an interview or allowed the reporter to accompany them during the office visit or surgical procedure.
A. is a slender, energetic mom with big, bright eyes. She’s able to cut through tension with a joke. She was overcome with tears when she was asked how she came to the area.
“I don’t think I could survive if I knew that I had to have these babies with an abusive person,” A. says. “That’s insanity to me. I feel like a prisoner.”
A. has two young girls and says her former partner was violent. She took the girls and left, and was trying to get a personal protection order when she found out she was pregnant with twins.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic
MICHIGALE Abortion Legal-Ballot-clinic-clinical-Litigation-Clinical-Health-Shots: I’m Like the Grinch
I’ve begged them to fix or snip it so that I can move forward with my life. They deny me,” she says, sobbing. I end up on medication for birth control. It’s insane.
I have to stop having sex in order to not be pregnant, I’m so fertile. So, abortion, even though this is my first one, I’m happy that it’s here because I don’t know what I would do right now.”
After a moment, A. wipes the tears off her face. She manages a small smile. It’s more sharing than I’ve ever done before. I’m like the Grinch: my heart’s getting bigger.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic
A woman in Michigan wants to be a mom all day, but she can’t wait to go back to work, so she can feel like she is on the brink of something new
It is what you think about when you think about why someone needs an abortion. Money problems. Emotions of distress. You can see a lot of it at Northland.
But you also see patients who are in great relationships, they’re financially stable, and emotionally composed. Women like M. — who also asked to be identified only by her first initial.
“I want to go back to work and just kind of have something for myself other than just be a mother all day, every day,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
M. has three kids, the youngest of which is about to start school. After ten years of staying at home with her children, M. felt like she was on the cusp of something new.
At Northland, the pills for medication abortions are prescribed and dispensed in the morning, while the afternoon is dedicated to the surgical procedures.
“Okay, so I’m just going to get you set up on the table and we’re going to do that sedation medicine,” Lance tells one patient, who agreed that the reporter could observe and record her procedure, but asked that she not be identified.
The lights are turned off after the procedure is over. The patient is wearing a medical gown and bare legs, as well as a staffer holding her hand to guide her through it.
Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/11/07/1131353552/michigan-abortion-legal-ballot-clinic
What is the worst thing that can’t touch you, man or woman? An abortion expert’s advice to a patient in Northland Family Planning
It’s normal for patients to be partially awake during abortions. Northland Family Planning gives every patient numbing medication applied to the cervix, and intravenous medications for pain and anxiety (fentanyl and midazolam).
A patient talked about how hard it was to get to the other side of the country. How she hid it from her mom at first, until her aunties threatened to tell her mom if she didn’t do it herself. Her mom made sure she ate a good breakfast before her appointment, and got up early to help her.
But she did not want to be trapped with the guy who got her pregnant, she says. She asked him if he could help her pay for this abortion. But the most he could do, he told her, was split it.
“The guys, they’re never responsible for anything like that, ever,” she says. It’s always the woman. We always got to step up and take care of it. It’s always put in the lap if we keep it or not.
You should stop believing it can’t touch you. It could touch you in so many ways. It may be your mother. It could be your sister. It might be your niece. It might be your daughter. Your future, your future daughter. Your future wife. Stop thinking it’s not going to touch you, man or woman.”
The Arizona Supreme Court ruled that abortions were criminalized under the pre-statehood law and it was enforced without a prosecutor
The old Arizona law that criminalized doctors for performing abortions cannot be used to charge non- doctors because there are other Arizona laws that allow them to perform the procedure.
“The statutes, read together, make clear that physicians are permitted to perform abortions as regulated” by other abortion laws, the appeals court wrote.
The lawsuit was placed on hold until the Court of Appeals made a decision about the case. He would not enforce the old law until at least 45 days after the final ruling in the original case, according to his agreement with the abortion doctor and the medical association.
The appeals court rejected Brnovich’s claim that doctors could be prosecuted under the pre-statehood law, saying the attorney general’s argument ignores the Legislature’s intent to regulate but not eliminate abortions and violates due process by promoting arbitrary enforcement.
Abortion providers stopped providing the procedure in the state after Roe was struck down, restarted in mid-July after a “personhood” law giving legal rights to unborn children was blocked by a court, and stopped them again when a Tucson judge allowed the 1864 law to be enforced.
Abortion is considered illegal at all stages of pregnancy, with various exceptions, in 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota , Tennessee, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
Courts decide whether or not the ban can be enforced in Arizona, Montana, North Dakota,Ohio, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming.
The FDA finalized a rule change that will allow abortion pills to be purchased at more pharmacy chains.
For over 20 years, the FDA had limited the amount of drugs they could sell to a subset of specialty offices and clinics. The FDA suspended the in-person requirement during COVID-19. A new scientific review by the agency’s staff supported easing access, a conclusion shared by many medical societies that previously said the restriction wasn’t necessary.
If you have a prescription from a certified prescriber, the FDA said on its website Tuesday that you can get the drug directly from a certified pharmacy.
More than half of U.S. abortions are now done with pills rather than surgery, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
The FDA in 2000 approved mifepristone to terminate pregnancies of up to 10 weeks, when used with a second drug, misoprostol. The first order of business is to dilate the cervix and block the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnant woman. The uterus can contract and expel pregnancies after 24 to 48 hours of taking masoprostol.
Bleeding is a common side effect, though serious complications are very rare. The FDA says more than 3.7 million U.S. women have used mifepristone since its approval.
Several FDA-mandated safety requirements remain in effect, including training requirements to certify that prescribers can provide emergency care in the case of excessive bleeding. Pharmacies that dispense the pills also need a certification.
The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists said in a statement that “FDA’s change does not mandate that pharmacies must stock or dispense mifepristone, nor does it supersede any state laws that restrict prescribing or dispensing of the medication.”
What is the impact of certification on abortion access in states that are not banning it? A question of Grossman, Nash, and the Guttmacher Institute
“In terms of whether or not that is going to have any impact in states where abortion is banned, I think the answer is probably not,” Grossman said. “I don’t see any real effect there.”
There is no clarity on what impact certification will have on abortion access in places that it is banned or restricted.
Walgreens said in a statement Wednesday that it is working through the registration, training of its employees, and evaluating the pharmacy network in order to make sure that they can sell products with extra FDA requirements and also meet federal and state laws.
Honeybee Health became the first digital pharmacy to supply abortion services at the start of the P.C. We are proud to partner with the majority of telemedicine abortion providers in the US and to work closely with our manufacturer to help set the high standards required for certification in response to the FDA’s adjustment to the REMS program,” the Facebook post says. REMS refers to the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy program for mifepristone.
But for many pharmacies, it will take some time to review and decide whether to undergo the certification process – and the certification process may be complicated.
The FDA requires a pharmacy to keep records of prescribers, recipients, and lot numbers of each drug they sell. This “inhibits the creation of a secondary distribution network for this drug,” Grossman said, such as if people in a state with access send the drug to those in abortion-restriction states.
In places where abortion was banned or heavily restricted before the FDA update, it remains banned or restricted, said Elizabeth Nash, a principal policy associate of state issues at the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive-health nonprofit.
“We don’t believe that anyone should be forced to travel in that way, and certainly, as this moves forward, there are a lot of very smart lawyers who are looking at the question of how they’ll be incorporated into drugstores and pharmacy chains, and where that can happen – and how these different federal and state provisions interplay,” she said.
He asked, “Would a state that was prosecuting somebody for diversion have access to those records? That is not a good way to provide it to people in states that are banning it.
abortion presents an important moral and policy issue. The citizens have been represented by their elected representatives. The legislature of South Carolina should determine matters of policy, according to his dissent.
The governor of South Carolina denounced the ruling on Thursday saying it had found a right in the constitution which was never intended by the people of the state.
“With this opinion, the court has clearly exceeded its authority. People have spoken before their elected representatives on the issue. I look forward to working with the General Assembly to correct this error,” the governor said.
The White House was happy with the Supreme Court ruling on the abortion ban in South Carolina and appreciated it.
Planned Parenthood South Atlantic and Greenville Women’s Clinic, as well as two individual providers, filed their lawsuit against the law last July, alleging that the six-week prohibition on the procedure violates several clauses of South Carolina’s constitution.
There is a newly proven, promising path to restore and safeguard these rights in many states, including some politically conservative ones controlled by Republicans.
If the Supreme Court rules against abortion pill delivery, the Biden administration’s Department of Justice would likely not make it their top priority. That would sharpen the already-high stakes of the 2024 election, especially for blue states. A Republican president could have a very different view of the consequences of the Comstock Act.
Just the same, supporters of abortion rights have made the most of the best strategies available to them, bolstered by the fact that most Americans support at least some access to legal abortion.
The Comstock Act of the 1915–20th Century and the Blue States’ Antiabortion (Pro-Life, Pro-Choice)
The law he inspired barred not just the mailing of “obscene books” but also birth control and abortion drugs and devices. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Comstock Act was used to prohibit the mailing of many literary classics, from Geoffrey Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” to works by James Joyce and Walt Whitman.
When Comstock died in 1915 Americans had second thoughts about his crusade, and courts began to limit the application of the law. Judges suggested that there were lawful uses of some drugs, like contraceptives, and that the Comstock Act applied only to those who intended to violate the law. That meant that doctors validly prescribing certain medications might be exempt from the Comstock Act, as would patients acting under a physician’s advice.
Some members of the antiabortion movement are pushing for a comeback for the Comstock Act, fighting for local ordinances that assert an obligation to follow federal law, including the Comstock Act.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who holds one of the definitive votes in abortion cases, wrote this summer that the Constitution is “neither pro-life nor pro-choice,” and he is unlikely to reverse course in the near term. But if the Court relies on the Comstock Act, the antiabortion movement might be able to secure the equivalent of a ban on all abortion medication without Kavanaugh having to contradict himself.
For those in blue states, this growing focus on the Comstock Act should be a wakeup call. The time is ripe for the repeal of the law.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/27/opinions/abortion-at-risk-in-blue-states-ziegler-ctrp/index.html
The Amarillo, Texas, case against abortion and the U.S. Supreme Court: When Trump becomes Attorney General, he could lose his job
True, parts of it may violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech, and the law’s provisions on contraception obviously contradict Supreme Court rulings protecting birth control. If the Supreme Court consistently applied its test laid out in the last summer decision overruling the landmark abortion case, the law’s provisions on abortion would face no obstacles.
“This research reveals the high stakes of this lawsuit, and we can only expect the worst from this Trump-appointed federal judge. Anti-choice bad actors are bent on restricting reproductive freedom, despite Americans wanting access to abortions, said the vice president of communications and research.
If Kacsmaryk sided with the group, it would eliminate the most popular method of abortion care according to reproductive rights advocates.
“More generally, if longstanding FDA drug approvals were so easily enjoined, even decades after being issued, pharmaceutical companies would be unable to confidently rely on FDA approval decisions to develop the pharmaceutical-drug infrastructure that Americans depend on to treat a variety of health conditions,” the FDA wrote.
Congress has delegated the FDA with the responsibility of ensuring the safety and efficacy of drugs. In discharging this role, FDA applies its technical expertise to make complex scientific determinations about drugs’ safety and efficacy, and these determinations are entitled to substantial deference.”
Danco, which makes mifepristone, also made a similar request to the FDA’s in a court filing, stressing that the lawsuit could decimate the company’s business.
Since then, he’s helped make Texas a legal graveyard for policies of President Joe Biden’s administration, presiding over 95% of the civil cases brought in Amarillo, Texas.
In December, Kacsmaryk put on hold the most recent attempt to end the so-called “Remain in Mexico” program. And he has overseen Texas cases challenging vaccine mandates, the gender identity guidance issued by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the administration’s limits on the use of Covid-19 relief funds for tax cuts.
Before joining the court, Kacsmaryk served as deputy general counsel at the First Liberty Institute, where he worked primarily on religious liberty litigation in federal courts and briefs for the US Supreme Court.
The case is being closely watched by a number of interested parties, including Republican and Democratic state attorneys general. The court was urged to act one way or the other by two different multi-state coalitions.
And a coalition of 22 Republican attorneys general asked the court to issue the preliminary injunction, arguing the FDA exceeded its authority when it approved the medication.
Abortion rights advocates have sounded the alarm on the case, stressing that a ruling by Kacsmaryk in favor of the plaintiffs would affect every corner of the country since the lawsuit is targeting a federal agency.
There is a Women’s March in Amarillo, Texas, on Saturday, and they are organizing around the issue.
The fight for reproductive rights now lies in the states, and legal challenges like these are the latest example of how our fight is bigger than it was in the past.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/politics/fda-medication-abortion-lawsuit-mifepristone/index.html
Kacsmaryk is awaiting the response of the plaintiffs to the Danco comment on ‘Inappropriate and Inappropriate’ claims in general relativity’
On Thursday, Kacsmaryk told the plaintiffs that they had until February 24 to respond to a recent filing by the Danco, writing in an order that following the deadline, “briefing will then be closed on the matter, absent any ‘exceptional or extraordinary circumstances.’”