When the Supreme Court reversed federal abortion rights last June, Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion stressed that “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
Justice Brett Kavanaugh went further, separately emphasizing that the controversy would now be one for state officials and that judges would no longer undertake the “difficult moral and policy questions” related to when a woman is allowed to end a pregnancy.
But the drama Wednesday in a Texas courtroom over medication abortions demonstrates that judges remain at the center of access to abortion in America and reinforces the possibility that another battle over reproductive rights could soon land at the high court.
Whether Kavanaugh was trying to downplay the consequences of the startling June decision or ignoring the persistence of anti-abortion foes, he and fellow conservatives who secured the 5-4 ruling failed to acknowledge the kind of dispute now before Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.
A single federal judge – not a duly elected state legislature – is positioned to shut down access to an abortion drug and thwart women seeking to end pregnancies even in states where the procedure is still legal. Such an order could sweep nationwide, rather than be limited to one state.
This new fraught chapter, accompanied by protests at the scene and heightened court security, reveals how America’s abortion wars have only intensified since the June 24, 2022, decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Oral arguments offer a partial look into a judge’s thinking, but during Wednesday’s four-hour hearing in an Amarillo courtroom, Kacsmaryk signaled an openness to the challengers’ effort to undo the FDA’s approval of abortion drugs. A 2019 appointee of former President Donald Trump,…
Read the full article here