Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) rejected a push by her fellow Democrats for the Biden administration to ignore a ruling banning an abortion drug.
Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union” Sunday, Gillibrand rejected calls from her New York colleague, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY), who last week called for the administration to ignore a federal judge’s ruling in Texas who suspended the FDA’s approval for the abortifacient drug mifepristone.
“It’s hard to ignore the rule of law,” said Gillibrand. “And we have a court system and an appeals system for a reason. So I think the Biden administration is correct in actually fighting this in the Supreme Court. Whether we win or not in the Supreme Court doesn’t mean that’s our last effort. We will go state by state to guarantee reproductive freedom.”
At the same time, Gillibrand blasted the Supreme Court over its previous rulings on abortion.
“When you take away 50 percent of America’s right to privacy, to say women don’t have it during their reproductive years, it is such an overstretch and an outrageous statement that I think, when people wake up to the reality of what this means for a conservative court where they believe they should impose their views of the world, their religious beliefs, their views on health care, on the FDA’s decision of 20 years ago of a drug that has been deemed very safe?”
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Texas blocked the FDA’s approval for mifepristone, claiming it had acted too quickly and without sufficient testing. Appearing on “State of the Union” last Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez called for the Biden administration to ignore the ruling.
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“There is an extraordinary amount of precedent for this,” she told host Dana Bash. “There is a term known as agency non-acquiescence, and this has been used. And for folks saying this is a first, that this is precedent-setting, it is not.”
“[T]he courts rely on the legitimacy of their rulings. And when they make a mockery of our system, a mockery of our democracy and a mockery of our law as what we just saw happen in this mifepristone ruling, then I believe that that the executive branch and we know that the executive branch has an enforcement discretion,” she added. “I do not believe that the courts have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted.”
The Fifth Circuit blocked the Texas judge’s decision but re-imposed stricter requirements on the distribution of mifepristone. On Friday, the Supreme Court blocked the Fifth Circuit’s ruling until 11:59 P.M. this Wednesday. According to CNBC, the Supreme Court will decide whether to continue to block the rules, or re-impose them, while it hears the Biden administration’s appeal to the Fifth Circuit’s ruling. The Supreme Court’s ruling could significantly restrict access to the drug nationwide.