CV NEWS FEED // The pro-life lawsuit alleging that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved the abortion-inducing pill mifepristone will be heard by a panel of three Republican-appointed judges starting May 17, CNN reports.
The controversial drug is used in more than half of abortions committed in the United States, which means taking it off the market would massively reduce the nation’s abortion rate.
“The New Orleans-based appeals court panel that will oversee the next stage in the blockbuster legal challenge … “is made up of three Republican appointees, including one Trump nominee who has called abortion a ‘moral tragedy,’” CNN’s Tierney Sneed reported:
Circuit Judges James Ho and Cory Wilson, both Trump nominees, will hear the oral arguments on May 17, alongside Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod, an appointee of George W. Bush.
The news comes after U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointee, ruled in favor of a lawsuit brought against the FDA by a coalition of pro-life medical organizations and doctors.
Kacsmaryk “ruled that the approval of the drug should be suspended,” Sneed explained:
However, his ruling was put on hold by the Supreme Court on April 21 and it will remain on hold until the case goes back to the high court, regardless of how the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals rules on the merits.
Ho is “considered one of the most conservative and strident members of the 5th Circuit, having described abortion as a ‘moral tragedy’ in a 2018 concurring opinion,” Sneed wrote:
In a 2019 concurring opinion, Ho also said that a trial judge’s ruling – which struck down a 15-week abortion ban and which was affirmed by the 5th Circuit under the then-standing Roe precedent – displayed “an alarming disrespect for the millions of Americans who believe that babies deserve legal protection during pregnancy as well as after birth, and that abortion is the immoral, tragic, and violent taking of innocent human life.”
The 5th Circuit is “considered one of the most conservative in the country has consistently ruled against the Biden Justice Department,” the CNN report added.
