Federal judge bars FDA from changing abortion pill availability

A federal judge in Washington state issued a ruling on Friday prohibiting the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from changing the availability of the abortion drug mifepristone.

The decision came out almost concurrently with a separate opinion by a federal judge in Texas that ruled to block the approval of the same drug after seven days.

District Judge Thomas Rice granted an injunction requested by a dozen Democratic state attorneys general who asked that the FDA be prohibited from removing mifepristone from the market.

The attorneys filed their lawsuit against the FDA in February, alleging the agency was not doing enough to ensure accessibility to mifepristone.

Rice, who was nominated by former President Obama, barred the FDA from taking “any action to remove mifepristone from the market or otherwise cause the drug to become less available.”

At the center of this suit is the Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) applied to mifepristone by the FDA. The REMS program is required by the agency for any drugs that may have serious safety concerns and is meant to ensure that the benefits outweigh the risks of use.

The attorneys general argued that the REMS applied to mifepristone has “no basis in science” and enforced overly burdensome requirements on who can prescribe and dispense the drug.

Mifepristone, the most common form of abortion in the U.S., has been on the market for over 20 years and the plaintiffs in this suit stated they were seeking an injunction against the FDA in order to maintain the “status quo.”

“Based on the public health and administrative considerations at issue in this case, Plaintiffs have shown the balance of the equities sharply tip in their favor and the public interest favors a preliminary injunction,” Rice wrote.

With this decision essentially in opposition to the one made by District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk earlier, the status of mifepristone is now up in the air.

The FDA appealed the Texas decision to the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals later on Friday.