The dueling legal opinions, as well as an immediate vow by the US Department of Justice to appeal the Texas ruling, means the issue is almost certain to end up before the Supreme Court.

The conservative-dominated panel last year overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that had enshrined a woman’s right to abortion for half a century.

Reaction to the Texas ruling was swift.

“My administration will fight this ruling,” President Joe Biden said.

The court… has substituted its judgment for FDA, the expert agency that approves drugs. If this ruling were to stand, then there will be virtually no prescription, approved by the FDA, that would be safe from these kinds of political, ideological attacks.”

The president of the powerful American Medical Association, Jack Resneck, said that allowing judges to interfere in “extensive, evidence-based, scientific review of … well-established FDA processes is reckless and dangerous.”

Planned Parenthood, one of the largest pro-abortion groups in the United States, said the ruling by Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk — a former conservative activist aligned with the religious right — was an assault on science.

We should all be enraged that one judge can unilaterally reject medical evidence and overrule the FDA’s approval of a medication that has been safely and effectively used for more than two decades,” said the group’s president Alexis McGill Johnson.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said his department would appeal the judgment.

“The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the decision… and will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal,” he said.

Kacsmaryk’s ruling came after a coalition of anti-abortion groups sued to freeze the national distribution of mifepristone.

While he stayed the FDA’s 23-year-old approval, he also halted “applicability of this opinion and order for seven days” to allow time for appeals.

Anti-abortion groups hailed the move.

Today’s decision out of Texas is a win for the health and safety of women and girls,” said Katie Glenn of Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America.

“The ruling reaffirms that pregnancy is not an illness and abortion is not health care. Finally the FDA is being held accountable for its egregious violation of its own rules.”

– ‘Judge-shopping’ –

The case landed in his court via what critics call “judge-shopping,” in which plaintiffs take legal action in a district where the judge has a history of rulings that support their case.

Opinion polls show a majority of Americans

AFP