A federal judge in Texas suspended the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, NBC News reports.
U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk halted the approval of mifepristone, but he has also decided to keep his ruling on hold for week to give the government time to appeal. This means that patients who use the medication for abortions and to treat miscarriages will not be immediately affected by the ruling.
“The Court does not second-guess FDA’s decision-making lightly,” Kacsmaryk wrote. “But here, FDA acquiesced on its legitimate safety concerns — in violation of its statutory duty — based on plainly unsound reasoning and studies that did not support its conclusions.”
The FDA approved mifepristone to be used in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy more than 20 years ago. More than half of abortions in the US are done by medication, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Anti-abortion activists have turned their attention to the pill in their fight to limit abortion access nationwide since the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer.
