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The Wild West of the post-Roe v. Wade legal landscape is focused on a lone federal judge in Amarillo, Texas, who could use a 19th century law to limit access to abortion medication for every American woman.
The judge, 45-year-old Matthew Kacsmaryk, held a hearing Wednesday about whether he should impose a preliminary injunction that would require the US Food and Drug Administration to withdraw or suspend its approval of the drug, mifepristone, while a larger case progresses.
Mifepristone is taken along with another drug, misoprostol, as part of the two-step medication abortion process. Misoprostol can be prescribed on its own, but it is considered less effective.
Kacsmaryk, who sounded open to the idea of restricting access to mifepristone, will have to agree with some or all of these general points raised if he decides to issue an injunction:
- That doctors who don’t perform abortions and live in Texas, where abortions are already banned, are harmed by abortions conducted elsewhere.
- That an FDA approval conducted over the course of four years and finalized 23 years ago was so flawed that it should be rescinded.
- That a single federal judge in Amarillo should do what no federal judge has ever done and unilaterally rescind an FDA approval.
- That a drug, which studies suggest is on par with ibuprofen in terms of safety, is actually so harmful it should be reconsidered by the FDA.
CNN’s Tierney Sneed wrote a longer list of takeaways from the hearing, where anti-abortion rights doctors and activist groups teed up their lawsuit in Kacsmaryk’s courtroom to further limit access to abortion care in the US.
It’s important to note that no matter what Kacsmaryk does, it will be appealed…
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