Boxes of the medication Mifepristone used to induce a medical abortion are prepared for patients at Planned Parenthood clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, March 14, 2022.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
The Food and Drug Administration’s power to approve drugs doesn’t override state bans on the abortion pill, a coalition of Republican attorneys general told a federal judge this week.
The 21 GOP attorneys general told a federal court in West Virginia on Monday that it should dismiss a lawsuit filed by GenBioPro, one among the manufacturers of the abortion pill mifepristone. The corporate has asked the court to overturn West Virginia’s abortion ban, arguing that it conflicts with how the FDA regulates mifepristone under federal law.
The Republicans, of their transient to the court, argued that FDA approval of a drug doesn’t give the manufacturer an unconditional right to the sell the medication in any respect times. The states have the facility to control abortion whether it’s performed through a surgery or a drugs, they said.
The GOP attorneys general said West Virginia’s law doesn’t completely ban the abortion pill. Mifepristone may be utilized in cases of medical emergency, rape and incest, they said. However the FDA’s powers would not override West Virginia law even when the state did completely ban mifepristone.
“Even when West Virginia had banned mifepristone, there still would not be a preemption problem,” the Republican attorneys general argued. Nothing within the statute that governs the FDA prevents a state from banning a drug that federal law otherwise permits, they said.
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GenBioPro has argued that West Virginia’s abortion ban violates the supremacy and commerce clauses of the U.S. Structure, which give the FDA the facility to choose which drugs are sold nationwide.
“Individual state regulation of mifepristone destroys the national common market and conflicts with the strong national interest in ensuring access to a federally approved medication to finish a pregnancy, leading to the sort of economic fracturing the Framers intended the Clause to preclude,” GenBioPro’s lawyers argued within the lawsuit.
“A State’s police power doesn’t extend to functionally banning an article of interstate commerce — the Structure leaves that to Congress,” the corporate’s lawyers wrote.
Mifepristone has grow to be a central front within the battle over abortion access within the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last June. The FDA and corporations corresponding to Walgreens have been thrust into the middle of that conflict.
A gaggle of physicians who oppose abortion have sued the FDA in a federal district court in Texas to overturn its long-standing approval of mifepristone. Republican attorneys general in 22 states have also formally backed that lawsuit through a transient filed in support.
The Biden administration, in its response to the Texas lawsuit, said overturning the approval of mifepristone would damage the pharmaceutical industry’s confidence within the FDA, potentially damaging future drug development.
Democratic attorneys general, meanwhile, have sued the FDA in federal district court in Washington state to force the agency to drop all remaining federal restrictions on the medication.
Walgreens has also come under fire after announcing that it plans to sell mifepristone but only where it’s legal to accomplish that. Republican attorneys general in 21 states warned the pharmacy chain against selling the medication of their states. Walgreens said it will not dispense or mail mifepristone in those states.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday said the state would now not do business with Walgreens as a consequence of the corporate’s decision to not sell the abortion pill in some states.