Texas court rul­ing on abor­tion pill opens FDA and its ap­proval de­ci­sions to wider po­lit­i­cal at­tacks

Should par­ti­san judges be al­lowed to make or over­turn drug ap­proval de­ci­sions, or should the non­par­ti­san FDA sci­en­tists and doc­tors con­tin­ue to make these de­ci­sions for a liv­ing? That’s the crux of the ques­tion fac­ing the US, as a Texas judge late Fri­day sought to halt the ap­proval of a pill to end ear­ly preg­nan­cies that’s been mar­ket­ed safe­ly for more than two decades.

The Texas court rul­ing sets up a ma­jor po­lit­i­cal and le­gal bat­tle, rep­re­sent­ing the lat­est push to fur­ther re­strict abor­tion ac­cess in a post-Roe world as cur­rent­ly more than half of all preg­nan­cies up to 10 weeks’ ges­ta­tion are per­formed with the drug in ques­tion, mifepri­s­tone, in com­bo with miso­pros­tol.

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