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company behind the manufacturing of a pill used in chemical abortions filed a lawsuit on Wednesday morning challenging state bans on the abortions, The New York Times reported.
GenBioPro, which makes the abortion pill mifepristone, filed the lawsuit in a West Virginia federal court to argue that Federal Food and Drug regulations (FDA) take priority over state laws regulating abortion, according to the NYT. The lawsuit argues that the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill trumps state laws and that abortion bans violate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, which protects interstate commerce.
“Laws like the ones in effect in West Virginia are harmful and unlawful,” Skye Perryman, President and CEO of Democracy Forward and counsel for GenBioPro, said in a statement provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation. “Our case makes clear that nothing in the Court’s decision last year in Dobbs displaced Congress and FDA’s role in deciding whether medications are safe and effective and determining which regulations should be imposed on mifepristone. States cannot substitute their medical and scientific judgments for judgments FDA has made, and doing so undermines not only access to medication, but the country’s entire drug regulation system.”
As of Jan. 6., at least 13 states have laws on the books that outlaw abortion, according to tracking by the NYT. GenBioPro said that its mifepristone sales in several states which have banned abortion dropped to zero, the NYT reported.
