Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said that he believes the Supreme Court should overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) approval of the abortion pill mifepristone.
Ramaswamy said at a CNN town hall in Iowa on Wednesday that the case, which the court agreed earlier on Wednesday to hear, is about the authority that regulatory agencies have without direct authorization from Congress. He argued that the FDA exceeded its authority in approving the pill in 2000.
“It’s my opinion... that the FDA exceeded its statutory authority in using an emergency approval to approve something that doesn’t fit Congress’s criteria for what actually counts as an emergency approval,” Ramaswamy said.
The court agreed to take up the case following requests from the Justice Department and Danco, which is the manufacturer of Mifeprex, the branded version of mifepristone. The case could limit the availability of the drug.
The pill is commonly used throughout the country for abortions in the first 10 weeks of pregnancy, and about half of all abortions nationwide are conducted using the pill as part of a two-pill regimen, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
The case arose after a group of anti-abortion providers, represented by the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, argued that the FDA did not conduct the proper process for approving the pill. They said the agency approved it quickly through a process that should be reserved for serious life-threatening conditions.
Ramaswamy said the approval of mifepristone is a “symptom” of “what’s going on in the administrative state.”
“The people who we elect to run the government, they’re not even the ones who run the government right now. It’s the bureaucrats in those three-letter agencies that are pulling the strings today,” he said.
Ramaswamy added that as president, he would “shut down that fourth branch of government” and rescind “unconstitutional” federal regulations that Congress did not pass. He said mifepristone should be taken off the market until it goes through the process that other drugs without emergency approval go through.
“I believe that the Supreme Court should put the FDA back in its place,” he said.
An August ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said that mifepristone could stay on the market in states that allow abortion, but changes that the FDA made in 2016 to make access easier did not follow the correct process and should be revoked.
The Supreme Court decided to hear arguments over whether those changes in 2016 can remain in place.
In a statement, White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre said the administration stands by FDA’s approval of mifepristone as safe and effective. The Biden administration also warned that reversing mifepristone’s original approval would call into question the FDA’s broader authority.
“The agency has maintained that scientific judgment across five presidential administrations, while updating the drug’s approved conditions of use based on additional evidence and experience,” the Justice Department said in a filing.
