A judge in Texas ruled Thursday that three other states can continue their efforts to roll back federal regulations and make it harder for people across the United States to access them. Abortion drug mifepristone.
Idaho, Kansas and Missouri filed requests in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas. The only judge there is Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump who previously challenged the approval of birth control pills.
The state wants the federal Food and Drug Administration to ban telehealth prescribing. In the case of mifepristone And it requires it to be used only in the first seven weeks of pregnancy, instead of the current limit of 10 weeks. They also want to require three in-person doctor visits to get medications, instead of none.
That’s because the state claims its efforts to provide access to the drug “undermine the state’s abortion law and impede state law enforcement,” according to court documents.
Meanwhile, Kacsmaryk said they shouldn’t be automatically excluded from lawsuits in Texas just because they are out of state.
The American Civil Liberties Union said Thursday that the case should have been resolved when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld access to mifepristone last year. The justices narrowly ruled that the abortion opponents who initially brought the case had no legal right to sue.
The ACLU said Kacsmaryk’s decision “opens the door for extremist politicians to continue attacking medication abortion in his courtroom.”
The ruling comes just days before President Trump begins his second term as president, so his administration will likely represent the FDA in the case. Trump has repeatedly said abortion is a state, not federal, problem, but on the campaign trail he emphasized that he had appointed Supreme Court justices who were in the majority when he struck down a national right to an abortion in 2022.
In the years since, abortion opponents have increasingly targeted abortion pills. This is because most abortions in the United States are performed using drugs rather than surgical procedures. So far, Republicans have introduced bills to ban the drug in at least four states, including Indiana, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Tennessee. No one is taking the same approach as Louisiana, which classified the drug as a controlled dangerous substance last year.
Kacsmaryk previously sided with a group of anti-abortion doctors and organizations that forced the FDA to completely revoke its approval of mifepristone in 2000.
But the state is pursuing a narrower challenge. Instead of fully targeting approval, it sought to undo a series of FDA updates that had eased access.
But while state leaders have pushed to severely limit access to the drug, Missouri voters sent a different message last November when they approved a ballot measure to reverse one of the nation’s strictest prohibitions. Abortion is prohibited at any stage of pregnancy in Idaho. Abortion is generally legal in Kansas up to 22 weeks of pregnancy.
Across the United States, 13 states under Republican legislative control ban abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions, and four states ban it after the first six weeks, before a woman knows she is pregnant.
Some Democratic-controlled states have adopted laws to protect against investigation and prosecution doctors who prescribe medications via telehealth appointments and by mail to patients in states where it is prohibited. This prescription is a key reason why studies have shown that residents of states with bans are getting abortions in roughly the same numbers as before the bans went into effect.
Mifepristone is commonly used with a second drug for medical abortion, as Roe v. After the Supreme Court decision in Wade, they accounted for more than three-fifths of all abortions in the United States.
This medication differs from Plan B and other emergency contraceptives, which are usually taken within 3 days of conception, which is several weeks before a woman knows she is pregnant. Studies show it is generally safe and completes the abortion more than 97% of the time, although it is less effective than procedural abortions.
