Biden’s HHS sec says Texas ‘is not America’ after abortion bill ban

CNN's Dana Bash on State of the Union asked, "What's your message to women and to medical providers who want to get this drug and use this drug?" Becerra answered, "This is not America. What you saw by that one judge, in that one court, in that one state, that's not America. America goes by the evidence. America does what's fair. America does what is transparent and can we can show that what we do is for the right reasons, that's not America."

On Friday, US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who is based out of Texas, stopped the approval of mifepristone via an injunction, reports Fox News. The move gives time for a lawsuit concerning the safety of the drug to work its way through the courts. Judge Kacsmaryk gave the federal government seven days to appeal, which Attorney General Marrick Garland said he would do.

Garland said, "The Justice Department strongly disagrees with the decision of the District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine v. FDA and will be appealing the court’s decision and seeking a stay pending appeal. Today’s decision overturns the FDA’s expert judgment, rendered over two decades ago, that mifepristone is safe and effective. The Department will continue to defend the FDA’s decision."

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke to Bash as well and said, "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."

Ocasio-Cortez said banning the drug equated to a "national abortion ban" but said "I will admit there would be certain workarounds."

She said the Supreme Court exhibited "lawlessness" over the issue of abortion after they officially overturned Roe v Wade on June 24 In a 6-3 decision stemming from the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization the Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution "does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives."

"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," she said.

"We must start to push back on our system of checks and balances which is designed to push back on should there be an example of judicial tyranny and judicial overreach," she added.