Democratic senators condemn federal judge’s ruling to block abortion drug

Top Democratic senators across the US are pushing back after a federal judge in Texas decided to block the FDA-approved abortion drug mifepristone.

On Sunday, the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand criticized as an "outrage" Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's decision, which is currently halted until at least Wednesday 19 April by the supreme court.

Speaking to CNN, Gillibrand said: "To take away the right to have medicine is an extension of taking away this right to privacy, to say we can't have medicine sent by doctors by mail to people across the country is further invading into this right to privacy, where the court and government has a right to what's in your mail, and who you're talking to and what communications you're having. It's an outrage."

She went on to condemn the supreme court, which in June 2022 decided to overturn Roe v Wade, a ruling that declared the constitutional right to an abortion for nearly half a century.

Gillibrand said the supreme court's decision was an "all-out assault on women's reproductive freedom," adding: "What we are seeing in these Republican legislatures as well as these very conservative courts is a continuation of that assault."

Similarly, the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar called Kacsmaryk's decision "unbelievable".

"What is going to be next? Is that judge going to not like birth control pills? Are we going to have a judge that doesn't like [cholesterol medication] Lipitor? There's a reason that Congress gave the FDA the power to make these decisions about safety," Klobuchar told ABC.

"I can tell you who is harmed by this. It's women that are going to have to take a bus across the country from Texas to Minnesota or to Illinois. That's the problem right now," she added, pledging to "aggressively litigate" the ruling if the supreme court decides to uphold it.

The Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin, meanwhile, said that Kacsmaryk "is not guided by science".

"What we have in Texas is a judge who is not guided by science, but is part of an extreme Republican concerted effort to ban abortion nationwide," Baldwin told NBC.

"We do not need judges, politicians or government telling women about what sort of healthcare they can have. It is an issue that is not only playing out in the court in Texas, but in the state of Florida, with the governor signing a near six-week ban, Idaho forbidding travel out of state for minors, Wisconsin where we've gone back to literally 1849. That is the date our criminal abortion ban was passed and that's 174 years ago," Baldwin said.

Last month, Baldwin and the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat, led the introduction of the Women's Health Protection Act of 2023, which would safeguard abortion rights nationwide and "restore the right to comprehensive reproductive healthcare for millions of Americans".

Following Kacsmaryk's ruling, the justice department and the drug's manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, asked the supreme court to intervene in an attempt to halt the restrictions, which would have limited mifepristone's use after seven weeks of pregnancy as well as ban mail delivery of the drug. Mifepristone is currently approved until 10 weeks.

On Friday, the conservative supreme court justice Samuel Alito temporarily blocked the Texas lower court ruling and instead imposed on to it a five-day stay, allowing the justices more time to decide on their next steps.

Alito's move allows for the country's most common method of pregnancy termination to remain unchanged until at least the end of Wednesday.

Despite nationwide outrage from progressive lawmakers and reproductive rights activists, conservative lawmakers have defended the growing wave of various abortion bans.

In an interview on Sunday with NBC, the Republican senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana said reactions to the Texas ruling are "totally alarmist".

"It's totally alarmist. And by the way, when did the FDA think they could go above the law?" Cassidy said, adding: "Dobbs, I think, was the correct decision," in reference to the supreme court's overturning of federal abortion rights last year.

Cassidy's comments come two days after Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed into law a six-week abortion ban across the state, which currently has a 15-week ban.