“What you saw by that one judge, in that one court, in that one state, that’s not America.”
The Food and Drug Administration’s clearance of the abortion-inducing medicine mifepristone was recently blocked by a court order, which US Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra vehemently decried on Sunday, saying it was “not America.”
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During State of the Union, CNN’s Dana Bash posed the question: “What’s your message to women and to medical providers who want to get this drug and use this drug?” Becerra answered, “This is not America. What you saw by that one judge, in that one court, in that one state, that’s not America. America goes by the evidence. America does what’s fair. America does what is transparent and can we can show that what we do is for the right reasons, that’s not America.”
Mifepristone, a medication that has been licensed by the government for use in pregnancy termination, has had its permission temporarily revoked by a judge in Texas. The choice is made as a court case that challenges the drug’s safety is being heard. The federal government has promised to appeal the ruling, and they have seven days to do so. This development draws attention to the continuing discussion about medical procedure safety and reproductive rights.
Garland said, “The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the decision of the District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal. Today’s decision overturns the FDA’s expert judgment, rendered over two decades ago, that mifepristone is safe and effective. The Department will continue to defend the FDA’s decision.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a representative from New York, also talked with Bash and stated, “I do not believe that the courts have the authority to have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted, and I do believe that it creates a crisis.”
Banning the medicine, according to Ocasio-Cortez, is equivalent to a “national abortion ban” but said “I will admit there would be certain workarounds.”
As the Supreme Court formally overruled Roe v. Wade on June 24, she said that the decision demonstrated “lawlessness” on the topic of abortion. The US Constitution, according to the Supreme Court’s 6-3 judgment in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization “does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
“Once you ban medication abortion—or start banning medication abortion—which represents the overwhelming number of abortions in the United States, then we are in extremely dangerous territory,” she said.
“We must start to push back on our system of checks and balances which is designed to push back on should there be an example of judicial tyranny and judicial overreach,” she added.
