Kamala Harris Credits Make-Believe Federal Agency with Approving Abortion Pill

Vice President Kamala Harris mistakenly credited a nonexistent federal agency with approving mifepristone in 2000, the first drug used in a two-drug medication abortion regimen.

While speaking with Noticias Telemundo’s Vanessa Hauc in an interview that aired on Friday, Harris said the “Federal Drug Administration” is responsible for approving the abortion pill, Fox News reported. While the agency is not real, it would have the same abbreviation as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which did approve mifepristone:

Kamala Harris refers to the "Federal Drug Administration," which does not exist pic.twitter.com/m9SB48icKi

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) April 22, 2023

Harris made the error while speaking about a lawsuit targeting the FDA’s approval of the drug.

“On the mifepristone issue, it’s politicians finding a court, targeting a specific court that they thought would be helpful to them, to take a medication off the market, which was approved 20 years ago by the Federal Drug Administration,” Harris said.

Harris claimed that if the FDA’s approval of mifepristone can be challenged, the same thing “could happen to any one of those drugs in your medicine cabinet.”

The Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit in November 2022 against the FDA on behalf of four national medical associations and several doctors, alleging that the agency “chose politics over science and approved chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States.” The lawsuit points to six discrete agency actions since the legalization of mifepristone and misoprostol in 2000 and asked the court to hold the agency’s actions unlawful.

In April, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas handed down a 67-page decision that the FDA’s decisions were illegal under federal law and a nationwide injunction blocking the abortion pill.

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Days later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially granted a stay requested by the Biden Justice Department. The court’s 42-page opinion temporarily put on hold the part of the decision about the 2000 FDA decision because it might be past the deadline for bringing legal challenges. It added, however, that it was a “close call” and that the court might go the opposite direction after receiving additional legal arguments. But the appellate court rejected a stay on anything from 2016 to the present, affirming the trial court’s injunction.

The Supreme Court ultimately issued an administrative stay on Friday that preserves access to the abortion pill while litigation plays out in lower courts.