Abortion Pill Legal Fight Explained | David Cohen | TMR

Emma is joined by David Cohen, professor at Drexel Law School, to discuss the recent district court rulings on medication abortion in Texas and Washington State.

Professor David Cohen then parses through the last week in abortion news, with a carefully coordinated GOP lawsuit in Texas successfully overturning a multi-decade precedent by the FDA that approved the abortion pill Mifepristone. He and Emma discuss the particular role of Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in pushing the GOP agenda through the US court system, analyze his absurd reliance on 1800s obscenities laws in his decision, and why this decision completely ignores medical studies and the authority of the FDA. Wrapping up, they tackle the impact this ruling might have on gender-affirming care, and other medical rights under threat.

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And we are joined Now by David S Cohen on the phone. A board member of the Abortion Care Network. Professor of law at the Drexel University Kline School of Law. Co-author of an obstacle course about the everyday struggle to get an abortion in America. David thank you so much for coming on to talk to us about this Landmark abortion ruling over the weekend. Thanks for having me. And I mean I say landmark without any kind of positive association with it. Because the underlying ruling absolutely has an incredible amount of holes in it. But also the ramifications and the fight that it's setting up are perhaps even more important. Could you give our audience a summary of what has happened over the past few days? Absolutely. So the way medication abortion Works in this country is that there are two drugs. Mifepristone is the first drug. And misoprostol is the second drug. These lawsuits were all about that first drug, methopristone. The FDA approved it back in 2000 to be used in abortions. And a group of conservative doctors filed a lawsuit in Texas saying that the FDA unlawfully approved this drug and never should have done it because it's not safe according to them. And the FDA should have known that. Now all of the science shows that this is an incredibly safe and effective drug. But this conservative group used anti-abortion studies and really sort of fake science to say to this judge that you should say that the FDA acted improperly. And on Friday afternoon this judge really was hand-picked. They filed it in a very particular location in Texas to get this very conservative judge. And he agreed with them. He said that the FDA acted improperly. And that the FDA's approval needs to stay. Which means put on hold. While the full case goes forward because this is just an initial ruling. But importantly he said I Will Wait seven days for this opinion to take effect. Because he's going to let the parties appeal the case. So for now there's no difference in abortion provisions in this country. But if Friday Night comes and goes without any other courts weighing in there might be. Gotcha so there's the seven-day waiting period that allows the Biden Administration to appeal.