Vice President Kamala Harris misstates the name of the FDA: In discussing the controversy over the abortion drug mifepristone, the vice president mistakenly called the FDA by the wrong name.
What Did Kamala Harris Do Now?
Abortion is an issue of strong emotional resonance for many Americans. Following the overturning of Roe v. Wade last year, is an even more critical part of electoral politics than usual.
The backlash to the Dobbs decision has served to give Democrats a political boost for the past year, and the Supreme Court recently ruled that the abortion drug mifepristone can remain available, at least for now. However, it appears likely the issue will come before the court again.
That the vice president of the United States referred to the Food and Drug Administration by the wrong name would appear to not be the most critical aspect of the issue in the news at the moment.
But Fox News reported last week that Vice President Kamala Harris mistakenly referred to the Food and Drug Administration as the “Federal Drug Administration,” while giving an interview about the FDA approval of mifepristone 20 years earlier. The Fox story appeared to have come straight from a short video posted by the RNC Research Twitter account. The FDA is in fact, a federal agency, but the “F” stands for “Food,” and not “Federal.”
The gaffe came in an interview last Friday with Noticias Telemundo’s Vanessa Hauc.
“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 in the interview, mistakenly calling it the “Federal Drug Administration” rather than “Food and Drug.”
The statement came while making the Biden Administration’s standard argument on the women’s right to choose, and how it has become threatened in the post-Roe era.
“Let’s set the scene. Many months ago, the highest court in our land, the United States Supreme Court, took a constitutional right that had been recognized from the people of America – from the women of America – which is the right to make [a] decision about your own body and your own reproductive health,” Harris also said in the Telemundo interview. “The government should not be telling that woman what to do with her body. This evokes, in my mind, very fundamental rights, including the right to freedom for each individual about what is in their best interest.”
The mifepristone ruling, by Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk, had represented an extremely unusual reach by a judge, to overrule the FDA on the approval of a drug, especially one that had been approved decades earlier. Conservative plaintiffs, such as the Alliance Defending Freedom, who sued in the most recent case, have often brought cases in Kacsmaryk’s district, knowing that the conservative judge will likely rule in their favor.
“Why are all these cases being brought in Amarillo if the litigants who are bringing them are so confident in the strength of their claims? It’s not because Amarillo is convenient to get to,” University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck told the Associated Press last week. “I think it ought to alarm the judges themselves, that litigants are so transparently and shamelessly funneling cases to their courtroom.”
The GOP Should Be Worried
The new abortion politics have begun to wreak havoc on the Republican presidential primary contest.
Former President Donald Trump, whose judicial appointments led to the end of Roe v. Wade, earlier this year blamed the maximalist abortion positions of Republican candidates for their lackluster performance in the 2022 midterm elections, which drew a strong rebuke from the anti-abortion wing of the GOP.
“It was the ‘abortion issue,’ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters,” the former president said on Truth Social in January.
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Expertise and Experience
Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
