Health

Biden lambastes judge who ordered halt in sales of abortion pill

Washington, Apr 11 (EFE).- President Joe Biden on Tuesday lambasted the federal judge in Texas who last week ordered a halt to sales of a pill used in more than half the abortions in the country.

“My thoughts are it’s completely out of bounds what the judge did,” said Biden upon being asked by reporters before boarding Air Force One to head to Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

The White House had already criticized the decision of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, appointed by Biden’s Republican predecessor Donald Trump, saying that he was placing the lives of pregnant women in the US in danger.

In addition, the White House believes that the ruling restricts the ability of the Food and Drug Administration, the US medical regulatory agency, to approve the use of medications.

The US Department of Justice on Monday filed an appeal of the Texas judge’s ruling with the Fifth District Court of Appeals in New Orleans, one of the most conservative appeals courts in the country.

Some Democratic lawmakers and legal analysts, however, are urging the FDA to simply disregard Kacsmaryk’s decision.

It is anticipated that the Texas judge’s ruling will enter into force on Friday in what will be a new blow to the reproductive rights movement almost a year after the heavily conservative US Supreme Court ended the constitutional protection for abortion.

With the high court’s overturning of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade court precedent, individual states have begun passing assorted laws to prohibit or restrict abortions.

However, the anti-abortion movement has not stopped there and now has launched a new battle to ban the termination of pregnancies using medications.

In those states where the procedure has been prohibited, some women have been resorting to using abortion pills because they are easily accessible and can be received by mail, even in states where abortions are banned.

Specifically, the Texas judge’s ruling is aimed at a medication called mifepristone, the sale of which was approved by the FDA in 2000.

The FDA considers the drug to be completely safe, but anti-abortion activists claim that using it entails risks.

Never before has a judge nullified a medical decision of the FDA, whose criteria for approving medications are a benchmark for the entire world in terms of ensuring drug safety for the public.

The case has sparked such considerable concern due to the consequences it could have for approving other medications that 200 top officials in the most important US pharmaceutical firms on Monday published an open letter in which they called for Kacsmaryk’s ruling to be overturned.

EFE –/bp

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