There are a whole lot of federal district courts in the United States, which means that rulings on controversial issues can sometimes get, well, complicated.
Like this:
Access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the U.S. plunged into uncertainty Friday following conflicting court rulings over the legality of the abortion medication mifepristone that has been widely available for more than 20 years.
Everyone who's not a legal scholar is like:
Here's what happened:
- On Friday, Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk with the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a ruling in a lawsuit brought by multiple pro-life and anti-abortion doctors and groups against the legality of the abortion pill mifepristone. Kacsmaryk's ruling said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in its approval of the abortion pill in 2000 "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."
- Shortly thereafter, U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice with the District Court for the Eastern District of Washington issued a ruling ordering the FDA to continue the "status quo" treatment of the abortion pill while the case is sorted out.
Both the Biden Justice Department and Danco Laboratories — the latter of which produces the abortion pill in the U.S. — have vowed to appeal the Texas ruling.
Biden himself, meanwhile, slammed the Texas ruling, claiming the court "substituted its judgment for FDA, the expert agency that approves drugs."
