ADF to 5th Circuit: FDA must be held accountable for lawlessness

The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Erik Baptist regarding a response ADF attorneys filed Tuesday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to the Biden administration’s emergency motion that asks the appeals court to stay a federal district court’s ruling that protects the health and safety of women and girls by halting the Food and Drug Administration’s illegal approval of chemical abortion drugs while the lawsuit proceeds:

“Federal agencies that act lawlessly must be held accountable. The FDA illegally approved dangerous chemical abortion drugs and has evaded its legal responsibility to answer the American people’s questions for two decades. The FDA put politics ahead of the health of women and girls when it failed to study how dangerous this drug regimen is and when it removed every meaningful safeguard that it previously implemented. The FDA should have to answer for the damage it has done to the rule of law and the harm it has caused to countless women and girls. We urge the 5th Circuit to keep the district court’s ruling in place.”

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Amarillo Division, issued its ruling Friday in the case, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. U.S. Food and Drug Administration, halting the FDA’s illegal approval of chemical abortion drugs. The court’s order allowed the Biden administration seven days to seek review from appellate courts, and the U.S. Department of Justice and Danco Laboratories, the pharmaceutical company that manufactures chemical abortion drugs, both filed an emergency motion to stay at the 5th Circuit Monday.

In their response to those emergency motions, ADF attorneys explain that the district court’s ruling “paints an alarming picture of decades-long agency lawlessness—all to the detriment of the women and girls FDA is charged to protect. It describes an agency that has repeatedly put politics above women’s health, demonstrating callous disregard for women’s well-being, unborn life, and statutory limits. Across decades, FDA has persisted in its unlawful activity, continually removing necessary safeguards.”

Alliance Defending Freedom is an alliance-building, non-profit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life.

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