(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) In an interview Sunday for CNN’s State of the Union, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra declared that Texas was “not America” in response to a state judge’s injunction against the abortion drug mifepristone.
The decision handed down last week has further roiled abortion activists—already licking their wounds over the overturning of Roe v. Wade—who had hoped to find a loophole by using mail-order abortion pills.
CNN host Dana Bash asked Becerra, the former California attorney general, for his message to women and healthcare professionals who want to provide and use mifepristone.
“This is not America. What you saw by that one judge, in that one court, in that one state, that’s not America,” Becerra proclaimed. “America goes by the evidence. America does what’s fair. America does what is transparent and we can show that what we do is for the right reasons.”
“That’s not America,” he repeated.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk—who is based in Texas—halted the approval of mifepristone in the interest of transparency.
Stopping the approval process of the drug allowed another lawsuit, the Northern District of Texas in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. the Food and Drug Administration, with the former group citing concerns over the safety and possible side effects to progress through the court system.
Kacsmaryk allowed for an appeal in the injunction, which Attorney General Merrick Garland promised to do.
In a statement, Garland claimed that the injunction “overturns the FDA’s expert judgement… that mifepristone is safe and effective.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez was also featured on State of the Union, where she claimed that the courts were out of order and should be prohibited from ruling on the matter.
AOC: "Once you ban medication abortion—or start banning medication abortion—which represents the overwhelming number of abortions in the United States, then we are in extremely dangerous territory." pic.twitter.com/Zb1zAdn0Iy
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) April 9, 2023
“I do not believe that the courts have the authority to have the authority over the FDA that they just asserted, and I do believe that it creates a crisis,” she said. “Once you ban medication abortion… we are in extremely dangerous territory.
The representative went on to falsely equate the lack of FDA approval for mifepristone with a “national abortion ban,” but did admit that there would be “certain workarounds.”
AOC also claimed that the Supreme Court was rife with “lawlessness” and suffered from “conflicts of interest,” implying that the highest court may need some executive intervention should “judicial tyranny and judicial overreach” come to pass.
