With the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) this week finalizing a rule-change that allows brick-and-mortar pharmacies to dispense mifepristone online, if permitted under state law, a lawsuit challenging the regulatory review and safety of “abortion pills” bound for trial in the Texas Panhandle assumes added significance.
Alliance Defending Freedom filed a 113-page lawsuit on Nov. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and an array of other organizations and individuals, arguing the FDA did not properly approve mifepristone for terminating pregnancies.
The suit seeks a preliminary junction suspending the prescription of “mifepristone and misoprostol as FDA-approved chemical abortion drugs” while the legal challenge works its way to trial, perhaps as soon as this spring….